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Re: YADPT (D=Dutch)

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Tuesday, November 4, 2003, 23:17
Paul Bennett scripsit:

> That sounds odd, although I know almost nothing of the technical > details and terminology of Unicode. Does this same notion of > equivalence extend to other multi-symbol characters with single- > symbol representations? For example, is U+0061,U+0301 (a,combining- > acute) considered canonically equivalent to U+00E1 (a-acute)?
Yes, it is. However, I was wrong to say that the ij-ligature is canonically equivalent to i followed by j (which would mean that they are the same, and no process may assume different semantics for one than for the other); rather, they are *compatibly* equivalent, which means that information may be lost in translating one to the other. In this particular case, I think the only thing that's lost is 1-1 convertibility with certain obscure character sets like ISO 6937 (teletext) and ISO 5426 (library/transliteration). Outside that specific scope, it makes little sense for ij to be a character. Certain Dutch-specific fonts may want to recognize sequences of i and j and substitute a ligatured glyph, however. -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com "If he has seen farther than others, it is because he is standing on a stack of dwarves." --Mike Champion, describing Tim Berners-Lee (adapted)

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Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>