Why was L2/25-061 provisionally assigned?

[Doug Ewell]

piotrunio-2004 at wp.pl wrote:

> I really don't get why [the character proposed in] L2/25-061 would be
> provisionally assigned to U+208F when it can be composed with
> combining characters (ˈ̩ U+02C8 U+0329) or (ˌ̍ U+02CC U+030D) which
> should be equivalent to the proposed character, and the potential use
> of the existing combining characters is not mentioned in the proposal,
> but the proposal owner was informed of the compositions before the
> Recommendations to UTC #183 were made.

While the quoted passage on the Submitting Character Proposals page makes sense for “normal letter with diacritic” proposals, which were once commonplace, I don’t think it’s typical to attach combining marks to a modifier letter such as U+02C8 or U+02CC, or for UTC to recommend composition in such cases.

The NormalizationTest file does not include any instances of combining characters used with modifier letters, except for a few wacky, cross-script, stress-test cases involving a combination of Latin letters, Hebrew accents, and Adlam modifiers.

Perhaps someone has authoritative info on whether the difference in handling is policy or just the way it’s been.

--
Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org