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Annex A. Accent decomposition table

This annex is normative. It defines the indicator-to-character mapping for the 〔…〕 accent decomposition of §4.3. Within an accent span, a Latin base letter immediately followed by an ASCII indicator is rewritten to the corresponding precomposed Unicode character.

A.1 Indicators

IndicatorDiacriticExample
`grave`e``è
'acutee'é
^circumflexe^ê
~tilden~ñ
:diaeresis / umlautu:ü
_macrono_ō
,cedillac,ç
/stroke / slasho/ø
&ring abovea&å

The & indicator also forms ligatures, which are checked before the ring-above reading (longest match wins, §A.3):

Sequence
ae& / AE&æ / Æ
oe& / OE&œ / Œ
s&ß (eszett — not s + ring)

A.2 Coverage

Not every (letter, indicator) pair has a precomposed form; only the pairs that map to a Unicode character are decomposed. The closed set is enumerated below (lower- and upper-case share the same indicators):

BaseIndicators that decompose
a / A` ' ^ ~ : & _
e / E` ' ^ : _ ~
i / I` ' ^ : _ ~ /
o / O` ' ^ ~ : / _
u / U` ' ^ : _ & ~
c / C, ' ^
n / N` ~ '
s / S' , ^
y / Y' :
d / D/ · g/G,h,j/J: ^ · h: / · l/L: / ' · m: ' · r/R: ' · t: , · z/Z: '

A 〔…〕 span whose body contains no sequence in this table is left unchanged and emits no diagnostic (§4.3).

A.3 Rules

  • Longest match. A multi-character ligature (ae&, s&, …) is matched in preference to a shorter reading of its prefix. s& is ß, never s + ring.
  • Line-bounded. An accent span begins and ends on one line (§4.3, §5.5).
  • Loss-free. The serializer reconstructs the original 〔…〕 source form (§7.6); decomposition is reversible by construction.
  • Diagnostic. Each span that actually contained a digraph raises accent-decomposition-applied (note), in post-decomposition coordinates.

The enumeration above follows the official 外字 accent guidance (§12 [AOZORA-ANNOTATION]). Additions are a MINOR revision: a new (letter, indicator) row never changes an existing mapping.