Re: Naming of functional ASCII characters in Unicode

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Jun 06 2000 - 14:25:12 EDT


Instead of suggestions for renaming characters according to a particular
understanding of their usaga (it may even be a better understanding than
embodied in the original name), a more helpful thing would be for everybody
to start using the *full* unicode names list, including all the aliases and
explanatory information, as found on http://charts.unicode.org

For example the ASCII portion is at http://charts.unicode.org/PDF/u0000.pdf
A text only version of the information resides on the ftp site.
ftp://www.unicode.org/UNIDATA/NamesList.txt.

Or, you can refer to the nameslist and charts starting at page 335 in the
Unicode Standard, Version 3.0, ISBN 0-201-61633-5.

Within the bounds of practicality, Unicode will augment the information in
the annotated nameslist to provide shorthand information on the identity
and range of usage of a given Unicode character.

Even the annotated nameslist cannot cover all aspects of a character's
usage. More information on problematic characters, or overall script
behavior, is found in chapters 6-13 of the book. This information is not
available online.

To cut down on the reliance on the 'frozen' official name of a character,
it would be useful if those vendors providing character identification by
name could support access to the aliases defined by Unicode as well.

A./



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