Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-fonts] Handling of Standardized Variation Sequences

@hfhchan As far as I recall, the controversy over Unicode Han Unification was over the very idea that a Han ideograph written in one style is fundamentally the same plain-text abstract character as the ideograph written in another style—as well as, to a lesser extent, the increased difficulty of writing, in the same run of plain text, two different styles of the same Han ideograph. The latter problem was ameliorated by the introduction of ideographic variation selectors.

But it *is* easy for an author to switch between two styles of ideographs in text without : just switch the font. The point of Han Unification is that the choice of an ideograph’s style is that it is not a concern of their fundamental plain-text semantics but rather of their rich-text formatting.

Variation selectors are part of plain text, however. If an author uses variation selectors in their plain text’s ideographs, that means the *author* believes that the particular style of those ideographs are a part of their text’s fundamental, plain-text semantics, rather than merely rich-text formatting. The author therefore expects their ideographs to always render with that specific style, as long as that style is able to be rendered. It’s the same rule with variation selectors for emoji characters and mathematical symbols.

At least, that’s my understanding of the Unicode Standard. Default rendering styles are one thing, but overriding explicitly included variation selectors strikes me as a strange feature that makes less stable the standard semantics of plain text. Why not delete the variation selectors, when they are no longer a desirable part of the text’s semantics?

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Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2018 21:17:11 UTC