Re: Roman numerals

James Kass wrote:
> I was taught, way back in elementary school, to write Roman
> numerals with connecting bars above and below.  Those bars
> distinguish the numerals from letters.
I consider this a typographic practice, not a feature universally 
inherent to those numerals. There may be several different styles of 
writing European numerals (e.g. "old-style" vs. "lining") but nobody 
plans to encode them separately.

The vast majority of text originators is not aware of the separate 
codepoints of Roman numerals and they use the Latin letters. This has 
been and continues to be common practice. Most popular software 
applications such as Microsoft Word use the Latin letters to represent 
Roman numerals for auto-numbering, not the extra codepoints. IMO, those 
extra codepoints never were alive and never will be.

-- 

Adam Twardoch
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