A sign/abbreviation for "magister"

Doug Ewell via Unicode unicode at unicode.org
Mon Oct 29 14:20:49 CDT 2018


Richard Wordingham wrote:
 
>> I like palaeographic renderings of text very much indeed, and in fact
>> remain in conflict with members of the UTC (who still, alas, do NOT
>> communicate directly about such matters, but only in duelling ballot
>> comments) about some actually salient representations required for
>> medievalist use. The squiggle in your sample, Janusz, does not
>> indicate anything; it is only a decoration, and the abbreviation is
>> the same without it.
>
> I think this is one of the few cases where Multicode may have
> advantages over Unicode. In a mathematical contest, aⁿ would be
> interpreted as _a_ applied _n_ times. As to "fⁿ", ambiguity may be
> avoided by the superscript being inappropriate for an exponent. What
> is redundant in one context may be significant in another.
 
Are you referring to the encoding described in the 1997 paper by
Mudawwar, which "address[es] Unicode's principal drawbacks" by switching
between language-specific character sets? Kind of like ISO 2022, but
less extensible?
 
ObMagister: I agree that trying to reflect every decorative nuance of
handwriting is not what plain text is all about. (I also disagree with
those who insist that superscripted abbreviations are required for
correct spelling in certain languages, and I expect to draw swift
flamage for that stance.) The abbreviation in the postcard, rendered in
plain text, is "Mr". Bringing U+02B3 or U+036C into the discussion just
fuels the recurring demands for every Latin letter (and eventually those
in other scripts) to be duplicated in subscript and superscript, à la
L2/18-206.

Back into my hole now.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org




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