Re: Int. letters & is_basic

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Norman says

"letter with any diacritical mark removed.  Therefore, A.3.2(27) is
incorrect not to have listed a_ring and o_oblique_stroke among the basic
[letters]"

No, Norman is wrong here. We discussed this in WG9 specifically. We knew
that A-ring is a "real" letter. However, the decision as to what are
diacritical marks and what are not is indeed not uniform across the
users of Latin-1. The definition of Basic and To_Basic are based on a
simple rule derived from the names used in the ISO standard. They are
well defined, but maybe not what is needed in some particular national
contexts.

Norman, this specific point was discussed at the CRG meeting held at
the Villars meeting. We all understood the problem perfectly well, but
there is really no other possible solution than that taken in the RM
that would hold water. Personally I wanted to remove Basic and To_Basic
compleely, but could not get agreement on this.

P.S. CLA readers may be amused by Jean Ichbiah's "crossword" test here.The question
is whether different versions of a letter can be used for the down and
across clues. The answer for E-Acute in French is for example yes, the
answer for A-Ring and A in Swedish or N and N-tilde in Spanish is no.