Is it a problem that they do? I don't think so. Using semantic symbols seems far better option. Most fonts simply map multiple codepoints to a single glyph while dealing with all fun stuff like ligatures and all fun from GSUB tables (and fun company tables in fonts).
Honestly, I see semantic information as an absolute win and good choice. If unicode didn't contain it, it would have to be somewhere else (or making ratehr unpleasant choices like having fj together). It's an illusion that it wouldn't. People want pretty text. Rest of the world doesn't care. They want pretty text everywhere.
Instead of hating unicode, there would be hating "glyph points" plus "markup" (that would be literally everwere, from email to form editors) have all kinds of problems.
Except it doesn't actually work. 'a' has a zillion different semantic meanings, all dependent on context. There is no crisis with somebody reading a book and misunderstanding which particular semantic meaning it has, because it is inferred from the context.
Semantic meaning always comes from context, and Unicode cannot fix that. People can use the mathematical code point for 'a' instead of the text 'a' and the semantic Unicode meaning is meaningless because the reader will see, like the letter 'a' in because, that it is a text meaning.
The only thing you get with multiple code points for 'a' is you can send out multiple identical appearing texts, but are different Unicode, so you can determine who leaked the memo.
Is it a problem that they do? I don't think so. Using semantic symbols seems far better option. Most fonts simply map multiple codepoints to a single glyph while dealing with all fun stuff like ligatures and all fun from GSUB tables (and fun company tables in fonts).
Honestly, I see semantic information as an absolute win and good choice. If unicode didn't contain it, it would have to be somewhere else (or making ratehr unpleasant choices like having fj together). It's an illusion that it wouldn't. People want pretty text. Rest of the world doesn't care. They want pretty text everywhere.
Instead of hating unicode, there would be hating "glyph points" plus "markup" (that would be literally everwere, from email to form editors) have all kinds of problems.