Re: Speaking of Plane 1 characters...

From: Barry Caplan (bcaplan@i18n.com)
Date: Mon Nov 11 2002 - 18:47:18 EST

  • Next message: Jungshik Shin: "Re: Speaking of Plane 1 characters..."

    At 05:47 PM 11/11/2002 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
    >Michael Everson scripsit:
    >
    >> >The scale in question is analogous to a temperature scale, not a
    >> >reptilian one.
    >>
    >> Now I very *seriously* don't get it.
    >
    >A temperature scale enumerates the degrees -273, -272, -271, ..., 0, 1, 2, ...
    >in order. When you ask "What is the temperature?", you are actually asking
    >"What is the scalar value of the temperature?"
    >
    >The Unicode scale enumerates the characters 0, 1, 2, ... 10FFFF. Unicode
    >scalar values are points on this scale, just as temperature scalar values
    >are points on the (Celsius) temperature scale.

    Well, not exactly...temperature is an arbitrary but standard measure of a continuous physical property. The multiple well known scales attest to that. But code points are absolute points, not continuous. And because one character has a greater encoding value does not make it greater then in any useful sense.

    Basically, we are talking about continuous ordinal scales vs discrete cardinal scales. Hardly analogous at all IMM.

    Barry Caplan
    www.i18n.com

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Nov 11 2002 - 19:13:31 EST