Asmus responded: > >It's a simple combining character. Even if you can't do arbitrary circles > >around characters, you can take one character sequence and map it to the > >glyph in a font. Systems that can't do even that need to be fixed. > > In other words, you would like to treat this as a mandatory ligature. > > To make this work in interchange, we need to get the buy-in from enough > platform, application and font vendors that they want to support this and > similar characters in that way (and fix their products where necessary). > > If we can get that kind of buy-in, then we could add this and other special > purpose circled characters via the new "named sequences". > > Lacking such buy-in, the addition of these as characters becomes more > appealing.
In addition, for something like a copyright symbol, there are property issues to consider, particularly in a R-to-L context. The sequence <heh, combining-circle> as an AL strong R-to-L character following by a combining mark, which will inherit the directionality of its base. So the sequence will be set to <AL, AL> for the purposes of bidirectional formatting. The question for any potential proposal of a "Saudi-Arabian Copyright Sign" is whether its directional properties should be strong right-to-left (i.e. equivalent to how <heh, combining-circle> would behave) or should be neutral (bc=ON), as for U+00A9 COPYRIGHT SIGN. A demonstrable difference in directional properties would strengthen the case for separate encoding, whereas if the proposed characters is bc=AL, then the case is weaker. Second, there is the question of cursive joining for Arabic. I don't know anything in the Unicode Standard that states that a combining enclosing mark breaks cursive ligation. It stands to reason that it *should*, but I don't know anything that requires it. Certainly the application of *other* combining marks, including the regular Arabic vowel pointing, does *not* break cursive connection. Since it would appear to be basically undefined and implementation-dependent what would happen to an Arabic letter if followed by a combining enclosing mark as the standard is currently written, this could be another good argument in favor of simply having a Saudi-Arabian Copyright Sign as a distinctly encoded character. Third, I don't like the proposed name, SAUDI-ARABIAN COPYRIGHT SIGN, for this. In general, 10646 doesn't go the route of naming characters after *countries*, even if their general use is restricted in area. A name more descriptive simply of the symbol itself would probably be more acceptable, e.g.: ARABIC HAH COPYRIGHT SIGN * used in Saudi Arabia or even: CIRCLED ARABIC LETTER HAH * a copyright sign used in Saudi Arabia --Ken
