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<p>Perhaps relevant to this thread, I was just reading in
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22043-kirat-rai.pdf">https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22043-kirat-rai.pdf</a> L2/22-043,
proposal to encode Kirai Rat Script, where it remarks regarding
the vowels:</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite"><span style="left: 119.986px; top:
466.274px; font-size: 16.6px; font-family: serif; transform:
scaleX(0.791951);" role="presentation" dir="ltr">These should
all be encoded atomically. This is because linguistically
these vowels are not composed of two separate</span><span
style="left: 119.986px; top: 488.474px; font-size: 16.6px;
font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.771283);"
role="presentation" dir="ltr"> characters, they are single
vowels in their own right. It is true that the custom encoded
Kirat Rai font uses decomposed</span><span style="left:
119.986px; top: 510.474px; font-size: 16.6px; font-family:
serif; transform: scaleX(0.829768);" role="presentation"
dir="ltr"> vowel signs as a matter of expediency, but this
decision should not influence the right way to encode the
script.</span><span style="left: 119.986px; top: 532.474px;
font-size: 16.6px; font-family: serif; transform:
scaleX(0.791942);" role="presentation" dir="ltr"> Because the
glyph for some of the vowels (aa and e) are part of the shape
of the last 3 vowels (ai, o, au) there should</span><span
style="left: 119.986px; top: 554.674px; font-size: 16.6px;
font-family: serif; transform: scaleX(0.793219);"
role="presentation" dir="ltr"> be canonical decompositions for
the last 3 vowels. With these decompositions, Do Not Use
tables are not necessary.</span></blockquote>
If the vowels are to be encoded atomically, and it sounds like
they should be, shouldn't we *not* want to have canonical
decompositions for them? I thought Unicode was trying to avoid
precomposed characters at this point. I guess it's too late to
hope for "only one right way to spell it" out of Unicode, but is
that still something we try to approach? It almost seems to me
that canonical decompositions also stem from cases of "things that
wouldn't be encoded if they were proposed now," and if so it would
not really make sense to propose anything with a canonical
decomposition. Or am I misunderstanding the attitude towards
canonical decompositions, or the proposal's statement?</p>
<p>~mark<br>
</p>
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