Position of the registered sign

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Ivan Panchenko wrote via Unicode (unicode at corp.unicode.org) :

> The registered sign (®, U+00AE) is already shown in superscript in some typefaces and on the baseline in others.

The vertical position and the size (relative to font size) indeed varies.

> The discrepancy is annoying because changing the typeface can cause it to appear either too small or too large.

Being too small is more serious. For example, in Aptos, the current
default font in MS Word, it is (almost) illegible in normal copy text
size.

Such problems exist for other characters as well, and they need to be
handled by using a different font when needed, for the text as a whole
or just for the REGISTERED SIGN.

> In particular, I see that it is set without superscript formatting in “Unicode®” on https://unicode.org/main.html even though the Arial font shows it on the baseline, and simply concatenating the circle in this fashion seems wrong to me (other opinions?).

The REGISTERED SIGN is classified as a symbol, not an alphabetic
character, so it is not part of the preceding word, even when no space
intervenes. Just like a period after a word is not part of the word.

> How about standardizing the position?

I don’t see a reason to do so. REGISTERED SIGN was not unified with
CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R (where we can expect the R to sit on
the baseline), and we can more or less expect the glyphs for these
characters to differ, but why would we fix the design? Some people
(including some font designers) think that a small superscript-like ®
is nice, some think otherwise. A font could contain alternative
glyphs, to be chosen using variation selectors or other methods.

Jukka