Re: String name and Character Name

From: Edward H. Trager (ehtrager@umich.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 28 2005 - 08:36:22 CST

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    On Thursday 2005.04.28 14:10:21 +0200, Hans Aberg wrote:

    > Glancing briefly at the many local names of the "@" symbol, it
    > suggests that Unicode should supply such localized descriptions.
    > Somebody remarked that the Mac OS X properly admits one choosing a
    > preference sequence of localizations.

    Not only Mac OS X. Linux also allows choosing a preferred sequence
    of localizations in the core glibc library (via the LANGUAGE environment variable)
    and also within the KDE and Gnome desktops.

    > So, in addition to the
    > character name, which usually is in English, only using the
    > (meta-)characters A-Z and " ", one can have additional descriptions,
    > expressed in files say using UTF-8.

    It has been proposed to put this information into the CLDR which will
    of course be in XML and hence support UTF-8.

    > The character name will of course
    > be important to uniquely identify the character, internationally, and
    > in the computer, whereas the local, informal descriptions will better
    > used in a localized computer environment. A Unicode palette should be
    > encouraged to provide the character name, and then possibly in
    > addition, local descriptions. If Unicode provides the right files,
    > computer software can choose these local names automatically, when
    > available. The character name has an advantage over the local
    > descriptions, in that it is guaranteed to always exist.
    > --
    > Hans Aberg

    - Ed Trager



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