Hi,
I need to present a base character with a combining character, while emphasizing the combining character and demoting the base character to "background" status. In other words, I want to present a combination with different styles for the combined parts.
According to the validator, a text run should not begin with a combining character. This makes it impossible for me to get what I want, as :first-letter applies a style to the combination as a whole (obviously).
I was able to "work around" the validation issue by inserting a zero-width character as first in the run, between my base character and the combining one. Since this is clearly cheating, I think the validator should have caught me.
I've tested a page with the workaround on Chrome 10, Firefox 3.6 and Internet Explorer 9. Chrome and Firefox render it the way I want, IE was confused and did not render the combining character at all.