Incorrect character composition

Hi,

I've suddenly discovered a need to use Unicode characters that do not 
fall into the category of "precomposed glyphs", instead being forced to 
use "combining characters" for certain diacritical marks.

However, the combined result from reportlab looks rather stupid compared 
to the results seen in other programs (browsers, text editors, word 
processors, etc.).  I even displayed the results in two different PDF 
viewers, Sumatra and Adobe, before concluding it must be a reportlab thing.

The problem is with the characters called  open o  (upper and lower 
case), and  open e (at least lower case, the upper case version looks 
better, but that may be more due to the open E being narrower than due 
to proper handling) when combined with the combining tilde, and other 
similar diacriticals.

In my sample at http://nevcal.com/temporary/openo.pdf I've also included 
a precomposed ã and Õ as well, for comparison of where the tilde should 
be placed.  Here are the same characters in email... I note that in my 
email client (Thunderbind) the precomposed tildes are slightly closer to 
the characters than the combining tilde, but in the reportlab-generated 
PDF, the lower case combining tildes are far too high, and those over 
(wider) upper case characters are not centered.  Times New Roman font in 
both this email (unless your client or the mailing list strips the 
fonts) and the PDF.

Glenn

ɔãɔ̃ÕƆ̃ɛɛ̃Ɛ̃