Encoding <combining abbreviation mark> (was: Re: A sign/abbreviation for "magister")

Marcel Schneider via Unicode unicode at unicode.org
Sun Nov 4 02:24:57 CST 2018


On 03/11/2018 23:50, James Kass via Unicode wrote:
> 
> When the topic being discussed no longer matches the thread title,
> somebody should start a new thread with an appropriate thread title.
> 

Yes, that is what also the OP called for, but my last reply though
taking me some time to write was sent without checking the new mail,
so unfortunately it didn’t acknowledge. So let’s start this new thread
to account for Philippe Verdy’s proposal to encode a new format control.

But all what I can add so far prior to probably stepping out of this
discussion is that the industry does not seem to be interested in this
initiative. Why do I think so? As already discussed on this List, even
the long-existing FRACTION SLASH U+2044 has not been implemented by
major vendors, except that HarfBuzz does implement it and makes its
specified behavior available in environments using HarfBuzz, among
which some major vendors’ products are actually available with
HarfBuzz support.

As a result, the Polish abbreviation of Magister as found on the
postcard, and all other abbreviations using superscript that have
been put into parallel in the parent thread, cannot be reliably
encoded without using preformatted superscript, so far as the goal
is a plain text backbone being in the benefit of reliable rendering
support, rather than a semantic-centered coding that may be easier
to parse by special applications but lacks wider industrial support.

If nevertheless, <combining abbreviation mark> is encoded and will
gain traction, or rather reversely: if it gains traction and will be
encoded (I don’t know which way around to put it, given U+2044 has
been encoded but one still cannot seem to be able to call it widely
implemented), I would surely add it on keyboard layouts if I will
still be maintaining any in that era.

Best regards,

Marcel


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