My point was that, had they not been legacy characters (or had RT compatibility been disregarded) Unicode could still have supported them as composed characters

My point was that, had they not been legacy characters (or had RT compatibility been disregarded) Unicode could still have supported them as composed characters. Though I personally still feel they are a kind of ligature or graphic, but luckily for everyone else I’m not the dictator of the world :-). We should be careful: someone on HN could write a proposal that they should be considered pre composed forms that should also have an un-composed sequence… so there could in future be not just 1 in a circle but 1 ZWJ circle, circle ZWJ 1 all considered the same…I can imagine some HN readers being pranksters like that.