I am setting some late Greek text which uses characters of a Coptic origin and am having a problem when the Coptic letters are to be set as drop characters. It works if they do not have diacritical marks but fails when the diacriticals must be entered as non-combining. The appended code shows the problem and, incidentally, why non-combining marks are needed. (I would attach the .pdf file if I knew the list’s protocol for attachments.)
The question is: Is there a way to get \placeinitial to take the first two characters of the opening word? In the example below, I need case 4 to work so that it looks like case 2.
\definefontfamily[mainface][serif][IFAO Grec Unicode][]
\setupbodyfont[mainface,10pt]
\definefontsynonym[DropFont][name:IFAO Grec Unicode]
\defineinitial
[Greek]
[location=margin,
font={DropFont sa 3},
n=2,
color=black,
distance=-1em,
hoffset=1.25em]
\starttext
\placeinitial[Greek]Ⲥελήνη
{\red Coptic capital sima}\quad\input ward
\placeinitial[Greek]Ἡλίου
{\red Greek capital eta with dasia (combining)}\quad\input ward
\placeinitial[Greek]Ⲏ̔λίου
{\red Coptic capital hate with dasia (combining)}\quad\input ward
\placeinitial[Greek]῾Ⲏλίου
{\red Coptic capital hate with dasia (non-combining)}\quad\input ward
\stoptext