If the decision were made to encode synthetic scripts into Unicode, is the
idea to put them into plane 0 or into one of the other planes or some into
plane 0 and some into other planes please?
Would it be a reasonable compromise between those who like the idea of
including synthetic scripts and those who oppose it to decide that one
particular plane of the planes above plane 0 is used for synthetic scripts
and all encoding of such scripts is in that plane?
If someone writes a poem or a story, then copyright exists. The copyright
is not dependent upon any assessment whatsoever of literary merit. If
someone is granted a patent, the invention must be novel within the patent
rules, yet the granting of a patent is not made upon any assessment
whatsoever as to whether the invention will sell in the market place. Yet
there can be an unlimited number of poems and stories, someone can write a
new poem or a new story and that does not disrupt the system. There can be
an unlimited number of inventions, so issuing an extra patent does not
disrupt the system. Yet Unicode has finite space. So, if the decision is
taken to include synthetic scripts, what test will be made as to whether a
character devised by an individual who likes to carry out creative writing
as a hobby will be included? Literary merit? Sales of a number of books?
Number of entries to his or her competition announced on his or her website
to write poetry using the new characters? There is the potential, sooner or
later, whatever the rule, that there is likely to be a borderline case.
Also, if it were to get around that if someone writes a story with a new
letter character in it then he or she might get the character into Unicode
then maybe a lot of extra stories will start getting written! No matter how
popular some particular book is at present, the fact is that someone wrote
it and someone published it and some people read it and liked it and started
using the novel character information in the book. Once one gets down to
precise reasons for including one author's fiction rather than another
author's fiction it might be very easy for the situation to look like a
"pulling up the ladder" situation no matter how obvious it may superficially
look as to why one author's ideas are included and another author's ideas
are not included. Is there potential for the including of one person's
literary creation in Unicode and the not including of another person's
literary creation in Unicode to end up as a complaint of unfair restraint of
trade of an author seeking a level playing field to try to market his or her
work and earn his or her livelihood or something like that?
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not opposing the introduction of synthetic
scripts, in fact I quite like the idea of including them, both for their
literary interest and also on a live and let live basis as it appears to do
no harm if those people who want them included are accommodated, yet I do
feel that the issue as to how a decision is made about whether to include a
particular synthetic script needs considering carefully as there are issues
additional to those that relate to whether to include some characters found
on ancient documents in Unicode.
William Overington
16 March 2002
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