Opinions on unicode normalization in Anki 2.1 (oxia -> tonos)

[Elijah]

I recently tried the new Anki version 2.1 which has some major changes. What I didn't know at first was that now for all new/changed content unicode normalization is applied (not for existing unchanged cards). For greek text this means that all letters with oxia are changed to tonos. For example

ί 1F77 (GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA)

is changed to

ί 03AF (GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH TONOS)

 

This isn't a bug in anki, but rather a decision by the unicode consortium. Since some fonts render the tonos sign differently than oxia I'm not sure if I like the change.

Oxia and tonos should have been the same unicode character from the beginning according to this article:

"Duplicated vowel+oxia characters in Greek Unicode range"

https://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Greek_Unicode_duplicated_vowels

 

I created a ticket for anki, because I didn't know the change was caused by unicode normalization (there is still a bug: search is done without normalization):

https://anki.tenderapp.com/discussions/ankidesktop/30614-diacritics-changed-on-card-save-anki-21

 

In Accordance texts oxia is used but in search it doesn't matter if you use oxia or tonos. Other applications like Microsoft Word (but not Libre Office Writer) distinguish between letters with oxia and tonos. So if you search in Word (didn't test with the latest version) you may or may not find what you are looking for depending on the diacritic used. This is why I'm still hestinant to switch to Anki 2.1.

 

I always thought that tonos is specific to modern greek. What are your opinions on this change?

Edited November 1, 2018 by Elijah