Re: Still can't work out whats a "canonical decomp" vs a "compatibility decomp"

From: John Cowan (jcowan@reutershealth.com)
Date: Wed May 07 2003 - 15:17:31 EDT

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    Kenneth Whistler scripsit:

    > Although perhaps John Cowan might be persuaded to come up with
    > the pocket edition explanation, comparable to his famous
    > list of Unicode conformance requirements:
    > http://www.unicode.org/faq/basic_q.html#15

    Well, since you ask (I already sent a somewhat longer version of this by
    private mail):

    Q: What's the difference between canonical and compatibility decomposition?

    A: Replacing a character by its canonical decomposition, which is either
    one or two characters long, does not destroy information, and makes no
    practical difference for most purposes.

    Replacing a character by its compatibility decomposition, which may be
    of any length, does destroy information, but typically transforms the
    character into better-known characters that may be easier to process.

    -- 
    He made the Legislature meet at one-horse       John Cowan
    tank-towns out in the alfalfa belt, so that     jcowan@reutershealth.com
    hardly nobody could get there and most of       http://www.reutershealth.com
    the leaders would stay home and let him go      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
    to work and do things as he pleased.    --Mencken, _Declaration of Independence_
    


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