From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Thu Apr 29 2004 - 18:06:12 EDT
On 29/04/2004 11:27, Language Analysis Systems, Inc. Unicode list reader
wrote:
> I should probably just let this go, but I'm going to weigh in on the
> PUA issue one more time. Mailing-list and Usenet discussions tend to
> be unfocused by their very nature, so any attempt by me to focus this
> discussion is probably doomed to failure, but I'm going to try
> anyway. If nothing else, maybe clarifying my thoughts on this will
> provide text I can incorporate into the next edition of my book, if it
> goes to another edition.
>
> ...
>
> 1 and 2 are the solutions Unicode can mostly do, but they're both
> problematic and I don't think they solve all the problems. 6 and 7
> are the solutions that are available now without any OS or application
> vendors having to do a thing. They're ugly, but it we're talking
> mostly about stuff that's destined to find its way into Unicode
> someday, why won't they work as interim solutions, and why isn't the
> energy currently being put into solutions 1 and 2 better put into
> actually standardizing these characters? 4 seems desirable, but hard
> to pull off without a lot of market strength (although there might be
> enough of a market to make 5 feasible). And 3 seems like a bad idea
> all around.
>
> I'd like to see the yelling stop and see people focus on the actual
> needs and on realistic solutions insted of just complaining about how
> the UTC isn't fair. And to the degree that the problem isn't really
> with Unicode at all (which is mostly), I'd like to see that discussion
> happen somewhere else.
>
> --Rich Gillam
> Language Analysis Systems, Inc.
>
Thank you, Rich, for your useful contribution.
I don't see the real problem with your solution 2, or for that matter
your solution 1 given that very likely no one is yet using the whole of
the existing PUA. Personally, I am not asking for two whole planes, just
a small area. It is only CJK which needs whole planes, and for that it
seems the existing PUA is adequate.
As for 4, I can see that there is at least a possibility of getting
support for something like Graphite into a reasonable range of
applications, and also a possibility of getting support for definition
of PUA character properties into Graphite (which is open source).
6 unfortunately does not provide suitable mechanisms for all the
relevant Unicode properties. For example, there are no controls to force
a PUA character to be default ignorable, or to make it into a combining
character with a defined combining class. Maybe some such controls can
be added, although I am not sure how much can be done without
destabilising important things like normalisation, and this would
certainly help to resolve the issues.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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