Charactles: more than characters

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a general notion of character which encompasses two concepts: points within a character set, such as Unicode, as well as arbitrary tuples defining structured objects. We call these general characters "charactles". Using this model, text can be defined to be a linear sequence of charactles, not requiring the use of hierarchical structures to encodethe text. As a result, all sorts of processing, such as searching and typesetting, are potentially simplified.