Re: Level of Unicode support required for various languages

Timothy Armes wrote,

> 1) How many and which languages absolutely require the use 
> of combinging marks due to the fact there the pre-composed 
> glyphs aren't sufficient?

This question isn't answerable, in my opinion.  Somebody would
have to come up with a firm definition of "language", for 
starters.  Where is the line drawn between languages/dialects?
It's like asking how many languages are there?  There are a
lot of Latin-based writing systems which need combining marks.

> 2) How many and which languages absolutely require the use 
> of variant selectors?

For writing systems, Mongolian and Phags-pa require the use
of variation selector characters.

> 3) How many and which languages absolutely require the use
> of variant glyphs?

Other than Mongolian and Phags-pa, and discounting positional
variants, no writing system requires the use of variant glyphs
in plain-text.

If positional variants are not discounted, the Latin script as
used for English requires positional/contextual variants when 
written cursively.

Best regards,

James Kass