From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Sat Apr 23 2005 - 17:11:38 CST
On 23/04/2005 21:42, Asmus Freytag wrote:
> ...
>
> But in the spirit of hypothesizing a solution, I would consider using
> an alias mechanism in the way aliases are used for Property names the
> best solution. For properties (and their values) there exist multiple
> aliases, which are all considered unique.
>
> This mechanism has been used to fix typos in the name of properties.
> For example the linebreak property called "inseparable" had been
> called "inseperable". Instead of changing that name, the correct name
> has become the preferred alias and the incorrect name has been
> retained as an alias. (A similar thing was done for an incorrect block
> name: "Cyrillic_Supplement" instead of the incorrect
> "Cyrillic_Supplementary"). The benefits of such a solution are:
>
> 1) users can use a 'correct' name to refer to a property and don't
> need to use an 'incorrect' name
> 2) users are guaranteed that software will continue to understand the
> old name, as all aliases are considered equivalent descriptions of the
> property
> 3) the UTC guarantees that all aliases from the same name space are
> unique
> 4) users can rely on that no alias will be retired
>
> The current use of aliases for Unicode *character* names does not
> follow any of these rules. They are merely alternate names that are
> known to be used by some user community. However, if people other than
> Peter Kirk consider the current situation in need of a formal
> solution, then this more formal form of aliasing would be a way
> forward. ...
I would support a move towards a more formal solution. But unfortunately
this solution has the same deficiency which I pointed out earlier today
with Hans' solution, namely:
> it does not solve the problem. For many of the character name errors
> are of the type that a name which has been wrongly given to character
> A should have been given to character B. And this type of change does
> not allow the name to be reassigned to character B.
...
> How could this be done? One very limited way would be to add to the
> list of Unicode1.0 character names. That would allow the use of a
> single alternate formal alias for characters, which should be quite
> suitable for corrections to the names with obvious errors. These would
> be printed with special convention (for example all uppercase). The
> existing use of informal character name aliases (in lower or mixed
> case) would continue as before.
>
> A more extensive approach would be to introduce a full-fledged
> CharacterNameAliases.txt file, which would not put an arbitrary
> constraint on the number of aliases. Even in this case, the aliases in
> the file should be restricted to formal aliases only, which would tend
> to keep their number between 1 and 2 for almost all characters (the
> original name being considered an alias as well, the numbers are 1 and
> 2, rather than 0 and 1).
I think there may be a significant number of characters for which
various people might want to propose more than one formal alias in
addition to the original name. Although I can understand that the UTC
might want to try to restrict the number of aliases, it might be tying
their hands unnecessarily tightly to use a mechanism which cannot cope
with more than one alias per character.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.10.2 - Release Date: 21/04/2005
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