RE: Need help interpreting seemingly ambiguous text in UTS 39

Peter Constable via Unicode <[email protected]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:13:28 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.text.unicode.general
Message-ID	<PH0P221MB9967899DF2AD32678976FCF8D1864BA@PH0P221MB996789.NAMP221.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>

The wording is a bit unfortunate and could be improved. You could submit feedback on this.

https://support.unicode.org/osticket/open.php

Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Unicode <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Karl Williamson via Unicode
Sent: March 22, 2026 3:42 AM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Need help interpreting seemingly ambiguous text in UTS 39

It says

Forbid sequences of the same nonspacing mark.
Forbid sequences of more than 4 nonspacing marks (gc=Mn or gc=Me).

I believe the traditional definition of nonspacing mark is gc=Mn.  The second line effectively redefines that definition to include enclosing marks.  Does that redefinition apply to the line above, or just to the second line?  It seems to me that sequences of the same enclosing mark would be suspicious.

Thanks