Chinese typography and U+FF5E ～ FULLWIDTH TILDE

CLREQ currently says that U+FF5E ～ FULLWIDTH TILDE is prohibited at line 
start, not prohibited at line end (Appendix A). Its Unicode lb property 
is ID, which allows this character to be a line start in most cases, and 
therefore does not satisfy JLREQ. There is no mention of U+301C 〜 WAVE 
DASH.

JLREQ lists U+301C 〜 WAVE DASH in cl-03 hyphens, prohibits it at line 
start, and not at line end (just like CLREQ does for U+FF5E). Its 
Unicode lb property is NS, which satisfies JLREQ. There is no mention of 
U+FF5E (JLREQ ignores all fullwidth characters). U+007F TILDE is listed 
as a western character, proportional.

I can think of three solutions:
- use U+301C 〜 WAVE DASH in CLREQ
- tailor lb for Chinese to make U+FF5E have lb = NS
- just make U+FF5E hae lb = NS

In a corpus of ~30K Chinese books, I find 681,803 occurrences of U+FF5E 
～ FULLWIDTH TILDE, but only 3,258 occurrences of U+301C 〜 WAVE DASH. It 
seems to me that Chinese users have voted on U+FF5E, and that the first 
solution is not viable.

I don't see a downside to the third solution, so it is my current best 
proposal.

Other solutions? suggestions?

Thanks,
Eric.

Received on Tuesday, 28 February 2017 22:25:06 UTC