Andrew Cunningham wrote:
> Hi
> 
> 2009/12/17 stuart yeates <[log in to unmask]>:
> 
>> If, however, you need to deal with characters which don't qualify for
>> inclusion in Unicode (or which do qualify but which haven't yet been
>> assigned code points). I recommend tei:glyph:
>>
>> http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-glyph.html
>>
>> We use this to represent typographically interesting but short-lived
>> approaches to the representation of Māori in printed works. See for example
>> the 'wh' ligature (which looks like a 'vh' and is pronounced in modern usage
>> like 'f') in the following text:
> 
> an interesting approach, although not the only way to address that
> particular issue.
> 
> and depends on whether you want to treat it as a ligature or as a character.
> 
> Other approaches have been to :
> 1) use PUA assignments, e.g. the MUFI and SIL PUA
> assignments/registries as examples; or
> 2) use U+200D to request ligation

On reflection, this is a subtly more general approach than our TEI one, 
since this allows new non-glyph characters to be introduced as well as 
new glyph characters.

OTOH, there are a limited number of PUA code-points, a constraint that 
the TEI approach does not suffer.

[For those unfamiliar with Unicode PUA mechanisms, see 
http://unicode.org/faq/casemap_charprop.html#8 and 
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/private_use_area.html ]

> Both these approaches would require specifically defined or modified fonts.

In our case, when generating (X)HTML (our primary delivery formats) we 
substitute character images cut from page scans of the original 
documents. Generating the right HTML and CSS for this is non-trivial.

cheers
stuart
-- 
Stuart Yeates
http://www.nzetc.org/       New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/     Institutional Repository