Aw: RE: Position of the registered sign

Superscripting can be down at a higher level (Rich Text, HTML ...) similar to bold face or italics. Latin-1 contains superscript a and o for Spanish order numbers, but for English order numbers with st, nd and th are superscripted at a higher level. In some cases you want to align ® with other circled letters, but for that purpose U+24C7 exists as a separate character distinct from U+00AE. There is no semantic difference whether ® is superscripted or not, so that would be a stylistic choice, which can be translated into markup like {\super ®} or<sup>®</sup>.

Gesendet: Montag, 16. September 2024 um 06:35 Uhr

Von: "Doug Ewell via Unicode" <[email protected]>

An: "Christoph Päper" <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" <[email protected]>

Betreff: RE: Position of the registered sign

Christoph Päper wrote:

>> How about standardizing the position?

>

> This is basically the same argument as for the asterisk ‘*’. I think

> that this is a valid use case for a registered Variation Selector

> Sequence in both cases.

The problem is that there is no bright line in typeface design of ® between “clearly small and superscripted” and “clearly large and not superscripted.” Variation selectors indicate a binary option: either the “normal” or traditional design, or else an alternative. Some fonts definitely show one style of ® or the other, of course, but there are many others that are somewhere in between — say, full-sized and slightly raised. Which binary option would encode that?

It’s not the same as something like U+22DA LESS-THAN EQUAL TO OR GREATER-THAN, where the “equal” line in the middle either is clearly horizontal or else clearly follows the slant of the adjacent lines, with no middle ground.

--

Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org