Re: ucs-normalize and diacritics

[Cesar Crusius]

Robert Pluim <address@hidden> writes:

> Cesar Crusius <address@hidden> writes:
>
>>> How common is 3-character composition likely to be? (for that matter,
>>> how common is 2-character composition?  I explicitly use input methods
>>> for this kind of stuff). I can envisage an algorithm that takes a
>>> combining character, then scans backwards to see if the font used for
>>> it will cover all previous characters, recursively. It does seem like
>>> a lot of effort for a small return.
>>
>> Recalling a recent discussion, they are unavoidable in polytonic
>> Greek, because Unicode does not provide the pre-combined
>> character. There's no other way to get an "rough breathing long alpha
>> with acute accent," ᾱ̔́. (Which by the way Emacs handles nicely with the
>> font I use, Iosevka.)
>
> Even that is only a two character composition (unless Iʼve
> misunderstood the what-cursor-position output), and itʼs rather
> specialized, and you know what youʼre doing :-)

There are three characters in total, ᾱ plus ̔plus ́.

>> Granted, not many people will use this, but for those who do, they
>> will be all over the place.
>
> I'm not sure I understand the comment. Current behaviour is what it
> is, Iʼm not proposing anything that would make it worse.

I'm just answering the "how common" question above, nothing else implied 
regarding the current discussion. For people writing polytonic Greek, 
compositions like the one above are not too uncommon, and two character 
compositions of the form "macron + combining accent" such as ᾱ́ are very 
common. FWIW.

Best,

-- 
Cesar Crusius

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