Wiktionary talk:Votes/2011-06/Redirecting combining characters

Are there any combining characters that don't have non-combining versions? If so, please provide examples. --Daniel 12:37, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

U+0591 through U+05BD, for example.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

which characters should be included in this vote

Unicode has categories Mc ("Spacing Combining Mark"), Mn ("Nonspacing Mark"), and Me ("Enclosing Mark"), among many others. Some details:

Me

These are circles and the like, which, when they follow other characters, are displayed as being around the other characters. Unicode says that they "may" be displayed alone if they appear alone, but I don't know what Web browsers do.

Mn

These are things like the combining form of the acute accent, damma, Hebrew vowels, and many others. These are what one usually thinks of when one thinks of combining marks, I suspect. These "may" also (according to Unicode) display alone, but I know some browsers mess these up.

Mc

I'm not clear on what these are, or don't know how browsers handle them. but here are some examples to see.

Which of these should be included in this proposal? IMO any that browsers don't handle well — but what are those? (OTOH, since we're only including those that have non-combining counterparts, that might (I don't know) restrict to Mn anyway.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:18, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Spacing combining marks are diacritic-like, but add width to the line. Some of them appear on the left side of the character they follow (even though the script as a whole is LTR); others appear on the right side, but still attach in such a way as to be considered diacritics.^. There are browser/OS combinations that don't handle them properly, but I don't know of any that don't handle them properly in isolation but do handle them properly in context, so I suppose that's moot.

For non-spacing combining marks that don't have standalone forms, we could consider redirecting them to pages that use them properly; Hebrew kamats, for example, could redirect to בָ, which we don't have any other need for. (In that case we would want to have some images that make clear exactly which part is the kamats.) But this may not be possible in all cases, and maybe it shouldn't go in this vote.

—Ruakh_TALK 19:46, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Re Mc: So how about we restrict the scope of the vote to Mn, then? (Or Mn and Me if any of the latter have standalone forms, which I think none do.)

Re characters without standalone forms: I'm not sure I like the redirection idea. In any event, if that's not to go in this vote, then the latter should be reworded to cover only such characters as have standalone forms.​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:04, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I restricted the scope of the vote to Mn, at least per this discussion. Feel free to revise that. --Daniel 04:04, 27 June 2011 (UTC)