On 06/08/2003 15:24, Doug Ewell wrote:
Like Freud's cigar, sometimes a "may" is just a "may." And I suspect
the phrase "any intelligent typographer" MAY generate some flak from
typographers on this list who consider themselves "intelligent enough"
yet have a different opinion.
I'm not a typographer (intelligent or otherwise), but I'm having a tough
time seeing how Section 2.10 *requires* fonts and rendering engines to
give a space-plus-combining-diacritic combination the exact minimum
width of the diacritic alone, or to leave equal space before and after
such a combination. All I think it is saying is that, for example, the
combination i-plus-tilde may be wider than i alone, because tilde is
wider than i.
OK, Doug, I accept that a "may" is a "may" and an implementation in
which the tilde on an i collides with neighbouring characters is Unicode
compliant. It's just bad typography (unless some special effect is
intended). Any typographers on the list care to disagree? I would
suggest that it is also bad typography for a space, diacritic
combination to be wider than the diacritic, as long as the typographer
realises that space is being used here as a convention and, according to
the standard, does not have the usual properties of a space.
--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
