- From: fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net>
- Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:14:04 -0800
- To: "www-archive@w3.org" <www-archive@w3.org>
Forwarding to www-archive for future reference... Martin Heijdra wrote: > fantasai wrote: >> >> Hi Martin! >> I had a question about the Mongolian Vowel Separator. >> Unicode lists it with all the visible spaces: >> http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/category/Zs/list.htm >> >> Is it actually a visible space, that separates words? I can't >> find much information on it, just wanted to make sure it wasn't >> some word-internal formatting character. > > It's both, and that created some issues: at the moment I worked > on the font a supposition that control characters had no physical > representation was part of Uniscribe, and that caused the MVS not > to have a physical space presence. An easy workaround was available, > so we used that. > > The size should be 1/6 of an em. The presence of the MVS causes > the previous letter to be the shape of a final (which therefore > in some documentation is considered also a "medial" variant, > judging from the position in the word); the MVS is then followed > by a particular left-leaning final version of the "a" or "e". > > There are words which optionally can have an MVS, but in most cases > there is a difference between a word with or without MVS, which > otherwise would be the same. (Transcription e.g. is ter-e vs. tere, > or aq-a vs aqa.) It only occurs in Mongolian, not the other languages. > > Since the ONLY following letters can be the a or e, the work around > was in the font to give the extra space to a special post-MVS variant > of a/e rather than to the MVS; but the intention of the Mongolian > rule writers clearly was that MVS was a space which caused particular > behavior. > > > Is it used to separate words, like regular spaces, or is it > > internal to a word? Or both? > > It's internal to a word (therefore, NEVER break there). It's often > just a way to make a distinction between otherwise similar words, > just like French ou and oł. And, as I said, only words ending on > "a" or "e" can have this behavior. > > Martin
Received on Tuesday, 5 February 2013 02:14:43 UTC