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Many unicode characters modify the appearance of the previous character. is there one that modifies the following character?

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No, unicode only supports modifiers after the main character. From definition D52 in Section 3.6, Combination of the 6.0.0 specification:

  • The graphic positioning of a combining character depends on the last preceding base character, unless they are separated by a character that is neither a combining character nor either zero width joiner or zero width nonjoiner. The combining character is said to apply to that base character.
  • There may be no such base character, such as when a combining character is at the start of text or follows a control or format character—for example, a carriage return, tab, or right-left mark. In such cases, the combining characters are called isolated combining characters.
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Are you sure? I thought there are a few double combining characters that go between the characters to be modified (e.g. a "tie" or over-parenthesis). –  Mechanical snail Aug 17 '11 at 3:20
@Mechanical snail - interesting, I suppose that could be considered a modification of the following character, though I suspect the rendering is still all done in reference to the preceding base character. –  jball Aug 17 '11 at 5:58

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