PUA:
You can put the characters *wherever* you want to in the PUA -
it's all unrestricted. The only caution to consider is whether
the developers of any of the application software you use have
decided to use portions of the PUA for their own proprietary
reasons.
This is not a problem with software from Microsoft (They do use
the range F020-F0FF for symbol fonts, but those fonts are
recognised by the OS as being different, i.e. as "symbol
encoded" as opposed to "UGL encoded", so in theory this range
shouldn't be a problem. You could avoid it if you felt
uncertain about that, however.)
Apple and Adobe both have characters that they have assigned in
the PUA range. I don't know whether this is of concern in any
of Apple's software. As for Adobe, I have yet to see versions
of any of their software with support for Unicode (i.e. not
using any kind of codepage tables or virtual small fonts), so I
don't know whether there are any concerns there either. I am
not aware of any other 3rd party software developers that make
proprietary use of the PUA.
Input Methods:
I understand that Tavultesoft is in process of developing a
Unicode-capable version of the Keyman product. We in SIL have
made a lot of use of Keyman for many years (it was developed
specifically to meet the needs of SIL minority-language
projects). I have developed a number of input methods myself
using this product, so I can tell you from experience that it
is very capable for small- to moderate-sized character sets. It
does not have any features for developing input methods with
supporting editing windows and such, as are needed for CJK, but
that shouldn't be a concern for you.
For more info, see http://www.tavultesoft.com/.
Peter
From: perryd2@csi.com AT internet on 08/24/99 08:33 AM
Received on: 08/24/99
To: Peter Constable/IntlAdmin/WCT, unicode@unicode.org AT
internet@Ccmail
cc:
Subject: Characters in Private Use Area
I am developing a Unicode font that contains characters needed
by teachers and scholars working in classical Latin and Greek,
to supplement those already defined in Unicode. I consulted
_The Unicode Standard_, p. 6-120 and was still not totally
certain where to place my characters within the PUA. I guess I
am a "software developer" and not an "end user" for the
purposes of this project and so should use positions more
towards the top of the range (??). One other source I found
said that all such characters should be assigned positions
starting at U+F000, but gave no reason or explanation. Can
anyone clarify this?
I am also thinking about keyboard entry for my characters.
Does anyone know if there is, or will be, software available to
create custom keyboards for Windows 2000? (Right now I am
using Word 97 macros.)
Thanks -- David Perry
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