From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Fri Apr 29 2005 - 06:17:24 CST
On Fri, 29 Apr 2005, Hans Aberg wrote:
> An abstract character, as opposed to a character, is a formal concept
> within the Unicode standard. This is fact mentioned in the
> http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr17/
> "The word abstract means that these objects are defined by convention."
I've noticed that too, but it really puzzles me. On the other hand, the
scope of the definition seems to be that document only.
What is a character (generally, as opposite to abstract character)
that is _not_ defined by convention? The very idea seems to postulate an
ontology where concepts can exist independently of human life.
My gut feeling is that "abstract" is just an attribute that has been
thrown in different contexts - undoubtedly in an attempt to clarify
things, but often failing to do that.
-- Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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