spyysalo/unicode2ascii — Issue #1: "micro" vs "mu"
Author: spyysalo
Created: 2011-11-04 06:55:43+00:00
State: open

Unicode defines separate code points for "micro" (µ) and "mu" (μ):

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/b5/index.htm
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/3bc/index.htm

the current mappings are the obvious

00B5 micro
03BC mu

which should work. However, PMC NXML appears to frequently use the code point for "mu" where "micro" should appear, causing e.g.

5 μg/ml Insulin, 10 ng/ml

to map to

5 mug/ml Insulin, 10 ng/ml

and similar with "mum" instead of "microm" etc.

It's not clear to best address this. Always using "micro" instead of "mu" for 03BC seems just wrong and adding heuristics for just this case seems excessive, but leaving this as is gives frequent sub-optimal mappings.