Why not positional variation?

[Koen G]

Hi Marco, thanks for your interesting reply. I agree that "iin" and "in" behave similarly, and for all we know they may be equivalent. It could be that the idea was just "and now there's a bunch of minims". But it could also be that the number of minims is important by itself, even though different numbers occur in similar contexts. 

I was unaware of Stolfi's observation about round characters alternating with others. Yesterday, while I was looking at these things, it did seem to me almost as if "o" is used as a spacer between other characters or clusters. I had not yet come to the more complete insight.

I have no strong feelings about what EVA-q is. Stolfi's quote could be seen as an argument both against it and in favor of positional variation. It might be that the underlying "things" of EVA "a, y, o" are really averse of each other, and we cannot expect them or their variants together. But it might also be that their collision is exactly what triggers the use of a variant. In that case, they simply don't collide because they take a different shape when that happens. But again, I don't feel strongly about any of this.