Re: YADPT (D=Dutch)

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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