[Bug 13502] Text run starting with composing character should be valid

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13502

--- Comment #18 from Shai Berger <shai@platonix.com> 2011-09-29 11:43:30 UTC ---
There is a point that was evoked for me by Leif's earlier message: a
significant distinction between the sets of combining characters under
discussion. I've sort of mentioned it in passing before, but I think it's a
point that should be made more central.

Some of the characters I wish to emphasize separately from their base are
indeed diacritics; such is the case for, e.g., 05C1 "Hebrew Point Shin Dot".
Anyone who can object to "acce<b>&#x0301;</b>nt" should also object to the
equivalent with Shin Dot.

However, characters in the range 05B0--05BC (inclusive) are not diacritics in
any sense but visual; they are our vowels. True, we tend to avoid using them in
writing, and we have partial replacements for some of them in some contexts,
but still: These are the vowels. The vowel 'e', in particular, has no
replacement in any context in Hebrew; the only way to write it down is a
combining character.

The change introduced by the editor makes the Hebrew equivalent of
"acc<b>e</b>nt" invalid. This seems to agree with Leif's PPS comment, and yet,
I don't think the correct way to promote such a change (even if it is desired)
is by enforcing it first on specific languages.

(as I noted before, the situation for Arabic and Thai is similar to the one in
Hebrew: Vowels are combining characters; I cannot say much about the frequency
of use of vowels and their possible replacements in those languages).

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Received on Thursday, 29 September 2011 11:43:39 UTC