Abstract

[Klaas Ruppel]

At 16.48 +0900 25.5.2000, kmatsum at tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp wrote:
>Now I have grasped your problem a bit more clearly.
>
>In order to receive more responses, you should perhaps present the
>issues (pp.2-4) in a less technical and more friendly form.

Kazuto, you have a point here. I have to admit.

I'll try to make "translations" of the issues. Not at once and for
all 18, but let's see. As we express on p. 2 for some problems we
already have answers.

1. Turned and sideways letters

In my understanding this issue is mostly a coding problem.
Turned vowel letters are used to indicate reduction. Some vowels
however look the same (o) or like another letter (u) when turned. For
this reason they are not turned 180 degrees but only 90 degrees. So
sideways o and u have the meaning reduction as have turned a, i etc.
So far so good.

Ligature æ (ae) can be found in texts turned and sideways too. We
propose to encode both.

Turned u-umlaut is found in texts but sideways u-umlaut is too. We
propose to encode sideways u-umlaut. We do not propose to encode
turned u-umlaut, since so called pre-composed characters are not any
more allowed to add to the standard. On the other hand turned
u-umlaut can not be composed because turned u does not exist. (The
diacritic two points below does exist.) It is very questionable if it
makes sense to encode turned u because in most fonts it would look
like n and  in the rest of the fonts it would almost look like n.

An other question is how to deal with turned u-umlaut e.g. when
scanning text. If one wishes to preserve the look one would perhaps
choose to make it n with two points below. For further machine
processing however it would be more sensible to treat it as sideways
u-umlaut.

In the bottom line our issue 1 has been answered already. We just
wanted to give our rationale for proposing turned and sideways
ligature æ (ae) but not turned u-umlaut.

I hope I managed to interpret this particular issue for you. After a
day or two I'll do the same with issue 2 etc. So, please, make your
comments, if you have some. Hopefully this makes it easier for you to
comment.

Best regards,
--
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