This is to answer a question which arose in the comments on this question on the Unicode characters for Roman numerals:
Why is this necessary or preferred over the usual way of typing ai, ai-ai, ai-ai-ai, vee-ai, etc.?
To start from the beginning, in Unicode’s Number Forms block, there exist code points for Roman Numerals that are at first glance very similar in appearance to standard capital latin letters or combinations thereof (U+2160 – U+217F). For example, U+2165 (Roman Numeral Six) looks very much like VI (Latin Capital Letter V and Latin Capital Letter I).
Thus, the question arises why one should not use the latter to represent those digits and, e.g., type Louis VII instead of Louis Ⅶ. Obviously, using no special characters avoids compatibility issues with fonts that do not support them. But even if I know that the text will be rendered with a font that does support these characters, why should I bother using them?
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