> From: Peter Kirk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 1:11 PM
> If you really want nu followed by
> a non-combining macron, Unicode has defined ways of doing
> this. Inserting ZWNJ is *not* one of them, and I wouldn't
I didn't propose ZWNJ. In fact, I didn't mention it, so I'm not sure what you mean here.
> expect any kind of break or control character to have this
> effect by default. The correct way to do this is probably to
> insert SPACE or NBSP, or the proposed INVISIBLE CHARACTER.
...except that I don't want a space in there, nor can I use a proposed character.
> And then of course there is the spacing clone of the macron, U+00AF.
Possible. Do such clones exist for all combiners?
> I wouldn't consider this a violation of layering. If layer A
> has to split a string at a particular place because of its
> own functions, that does not imply a break at layer B.
...if layer A is on top of layer B, then a break in layer A is, by definition, a break in layer B. Could I be using the wrong term again?
> And it
> is certainly a legitimate user requirement for a combining
> mark to be in a different colour from its base character.
Has this been accepted by Unicode as a requirement? If so, I'll just run screaming away from the issue.
> What is the best way to represent that is debatable, but some
> kind of markup at this point should not be ruled out in principle.
Unicode has nothing to say about markup other than relegating certain behaviors to it. I had thought that coloring fonts was one of those behaviors.
> In any case markup cannot be allowed to break all intelligent
> font features. Should kerning be broken because a particular
> letter is in a different colour or underlined?
Underlining (and bold, and italic, etc.) breaks kerning - "break" here meaning "causes a discontinuity in", not "causes to not work", because it forces a font switch, or, in the case of underlining, a change in the rendering behavior of the font in use. Color change is the only markup that I can think of for which it would be possible to preserve kerning across markup based change, and I assert that "people who change font colors midword" and "people who care about kerning" are two sets which do not intersect.
/|/|ike
