> I would like to check whether the decision to represent combining
> characters as separate characters is under discussion or if
> this decision seems fairly stable.
The decision to use decomposed rather than composed sequences for letters
with diacritics is as stable as anything ever gets. One reason for the
decision was compatibility with the MARC-8 encoding. Another is that
diacritics can be combined with base characters in combinations which do not
have, and never will have, precomposed equivalents. In general, the trend
appears to be away from the use of precomposed characters.
You should note that the MARC 21 character repertoire is not entirely
decomposed. It includes four precomposed characters -- the upper and lower
case hooked O and hooked U. Since there is no combining hook character in
MARC 21, these characters cannot be decomposed.
Gary L. Smith
Chair, MARBI Unicode Encoding and
Recognition Technical Issues Task Force
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