Typophile

order of diacriticals in Unicode?

Charles Ellertson

I’m having to build a few “ccmp” glyphs for setting Kiowa. I seem to remember that the order of specifying diacriticals in Unicode is “inside out”, starting with the top.

OK, no problem, the name for an “oh” with a macron & and acute above is, for example,

uni006F03040301 (or shorter, uni01010301)

But when you add the macron below as well, is it preferable to work “inside out” regardless of position, so the glyph name would be

uni010103310301 (omacron, macronbelow combining, acute combining),

or take care of the top first, e.g.

uni010103010331 (omacron, acute combining, macronbelow combining)

I suppose at some level it doesn’t mater, but if there is a convention I’d like to follow it, because for all I know, either the text file or the PDf may be repurposed.

TIA

Charles

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