Re: String name and Character Name

From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Sat Apr 23 2005 - 11:10:34 CST

  • Next message: Doug Ewell: "Re: String name and Character Name"

    At 14:56 +0100 2005/04/23, Peter Kirk wrote:
    >>If the move is on to encourage software vendors to develop their own
    >>proprietary lists of "accurate" character names for character-map UIs
    >>and such, instead of using the official, non-perfect Unicode character
    >>names, ...
    >>
    >
    >Has anyone actually suggested this? In my opinion, non-standardised
    >proprietary names are even worse than the official but sometimes
    >inaccurate names. What we need is a list which is both correct (or
    >at least correctible when errors are found!) and standardised. And I
    >accept that CLDR rather than Unicode proper may be the best place to
    >go for this.

    With policy of unique character names in hand, I see a scheme like
    follows: Unicode has a site, where private characters are registered
    by name. Registration may require some additional information, like
    providing rendering glyphs in a common, public format, for public
    use. Then Unicode assigns interim private character numbers (code
    points) to these registered characters, without a stability policy.
    This procedure thus collects potential candidates for future
    inserting into the official Unicode standard character number range,
    while on the same time quickly making them available for public use.
    It will be especially interesting if browsers, etc., can
    automatically pick down this information from the Unicode site over
    the Internet. Since there is a plenty of private code points,
    characters that are moved into the official range might deprecate
    their old numbers; or alternatively, these old numbers are kept as
    duplicates. In any case, a private character number, once used for
    something, should never be used for anything new, in order to avoid
    confusion.

    -- 
       Hans Aberg
    


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