Re: East Asian Emphasis Marks (Japanese bouten, etc)

Asmus Freytag wrote:
> 
> My recollection is, we picked up two empty slots that were handy, and 
> the BMP was getting full, and there were no better locations in existing 
> (non-compatibility) blocks. The 'related to vertical text' was a nice 
> bonus, but - in fact- distracting, because the other characters violate 
> Unicode's writing direction model, whereas these don't.

Thanks for the backstory. :)
>>> In the case of the sesame at least, the shape in printed materials 
>>> closely
>>> parallels U+3001 IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA, which is provided by the font.
>>
>> I would *not* suggest using that.
 >
 > The committee consensus was to discourage precisely that *hack-o-rama*
 > by providing dedicated codes.
 >
 > (The location of the comma and period in the character box is
 > potentially different for each font, but for use as an emphasis mark,
 > you need the 'ink' at a known location, usually centered, otherwise they
 > won't look right).

The most I'd have suggested is that the application draw its own shape
similar to what U+3001 typically looks like. As you note, the variable
position makes it very hard to use the glyph itself.

> Note, that we might want to note the fact that - by convention - 
> software scales the glyphs for these characters down (just as if they 
> had been regular characters).
> 
> A./
> 
> PS:  Form the last parenthetical remark, it should be clear that for 
> other symbols, for which existing fonts have glyphs that are always 
> centered, would not require specific codes for emphasis marks.

What code points are recommended for the filled and hollow dots when
used as emphasis marks?

~fantasai

Received on Tuesday, 14 March 2006 05:41:12 UTC