Assume everything on this list is ignored (was Re: Newbie Question - what are all those duplicated characters FO R?)

From: Mark Davis (mark.davis@jtcsv.com)
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 18:49:57 EDT

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    I repeat again. Nothing on this list has any guarantee that it will be
    seen by anyone in the UTC. If you want to submit a FAQ question that's
    great -- and I strongly encourage it. But please use:
    http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html to make sure it is tracked.

    The same goes for comments from Peter Kirk, et al. Proposals
    circulated on this list will, in general, have no effect on the
    Unicode Standard unless they are turned into written documents and
    submitted to the UTC.

    It is, of course, possible for one of the UTC members to happen to
    read this list, and create a proposal or FAQ, but do not depend on it.

    Mark
    __________________________________
    http://www.macchiato.com
    ► “Eppur si muove” ◄

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
    To: <Jill.Ramonsky@Aculab.com>
    Cc: <unicode@unicode.org>
    Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 10:12
    Subject: Re: Newbie Question - what are all those duplicated
    characters FO R?

    > Jill.Ramonsky@Aculab.com scripsit:
    >
    > I've formatted my reply to your question as a FAQ entry. FAQkeeper,
    please
    > take note.
    >
    > Q. Wouldn't it have made more
    > sense to simply have introduced a few new combining characters in
    plane 0,
    > such as: "make bold", "make italic", "make script", "make fraktur",
    "make
    > double-struck", "make sans serif", "make monospace" and "make tag".
    This
    > would not only have achieved the same effect (and with the same
    space
    > requirements too, at least for things like "bold uppercase A" in
    UTF-16),
    > but with much greater flexibility (in that you could also make
    _other_
    > characters bold too, and you could create combinations of the
    attributes not
    > currently represented).
    >
    > A. It would have provided too much flexibility, and would have
    tempted people
    > to use such characters to create "poor man's markup" schemes rather
    than
    > using proper markup such as SGML/HTML/XML. The mathematical letters
    and
    > digits are meant to be used only in mathematics, where the
    distinction
    > between a plain and a bold letter is fundamentally semantic rather
    than
    > stylistic.
    >
    > >
    > > I still haven't figured out what "fullwidth" means though. I don't
    really
    > > understand in what way a "full width full stop" (FF0E) is
    different from a
    > > "full stop" (002E), etc. I _have_ downloaded, and read in
    entirety, the code
    > > chart document for FF00-FFEF, and nothing in that document
    explains to me
    > > why these characters are necessary. Does anyone have any clues on
    that one?
    >
    > Fullwidth characters are used for backward compatibility with CJK
    character
    > sets, which have a notion of "fullwidth" and "halfwidth" characters.
    > Fullwidth characters are the same width as individual CJK characters
    and
    > fit into a uniform square grid. They should not be used except for
    > compatibility.
    >
    > --
    > John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
    > Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is
    > dramatically overdescribed. Still other languages are
    simultaneously
    > overdescribed and underdescribed. Welsh pertains to the third
    category.
    > --Alan King
    >
    >



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