Re: String name and Character Name

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Wed Apr 13 2005 - 10:07:43 CST

  • Next message: Peter Constable: "RE: String name and Character Name"

    On 13/04/2005 02:25, Philippe Verdy wrote:

    > ...
    > Instead of focusing too much about the proper name of characters used
    > in various languages or cultures, why not instead initiating a
    > localization project within the CLDR, to create localized character
    > names for each language?

    Good idea! Let's localise all the character names into proper English,
    and redefine the existing list as in gobbledygook language, or
    Unicodese, or something else which is explicitly not English. After all,
    BRAKCET is not an English word.

    >
    > ...(the default locale should use the normative Unicode/ISO/IEC 10646
    > names, not necessarily the English-US locale)

    But this defeats the whole purpose. NOTHING should use the normative
    Unicode/ISO/IEC 10646 names, because these are garbage.

    Ken Whistler wrote:

    >But wait! Reasonable people will say, "It's a standard. Of course
    >the name should be correct. And if it isn't correct, it should
    >be corrected, so the standard is correct."
    >
    >I trust that is a fair summary of the position that E. Trager,
    >P. Kirk, S. Srivas, and others have been maintaining recently
    >on this topic.
    >
    >
    >
    It is not my position that these names should be corrected, because I
    know that they cannot be. My position is that these garbage names should
    not be used, and that an alternative set be used instead. The difference
    may be small, but I am explicitly accepting the Unicode stability
    policy, and trying to find a way to work around it. So please don't
    associate my position with that of Sinnathurai Srivas who rejects the
    Unicode stability policy, although I share his concerns that ISO seems
    to demonstrate a lack of respect for languages and people.

    Adam Twardoch wrote:

    > Unicode names are arbitrary, just like the glyphs depicted in the
    > Unicode Standard.

    Indeed. The problem is that they appear to be partly meaningful strings
    of English words when they are not, when in fact some of them are
    meaningless, and some of them have a misleading meaning. It would have
    been better to assign to each character as a "name" a series of random
    characters, or else just the identifier in the form U+xxxx. And it would
    have been better not to call them "names" but "identifiers".

    -- 
    Peter Kirk
    peter@qaya.org (personal)
    peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
    http://www.qaya.org/
    


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