Re: Numbers / numerals

From: Andrew West (andrewcwest@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Jul 12 2005 - 08:57:37 CDT

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    On 12/07/05, Jon Hanna <jon@hackcraft.net> wrote:
    > Joel Kalvesmaki wrote:
    > > Greetings,
    > >
    > > It seems to me that Unicode block U+10140 to U+1018F should be termed
    > > Ancient Greek Numerals, not Ancient Greek Numbers, since what is being
    > > treated are not the abstractions but their representation. (Cf. the correct
    > > usage in _The Unicode Standard, 4.0_, p. 358)
    >
    > The names assigned to characters are never changed.
    >

    But, the names assigned to blocks may be changed, for example the
    block called "Cyrillic Supplementary" in Unicode 3.2 and 4.0 has been
    known as "Cyrillic Supplement" since Unicode 4.0.1 (although the old
    name is retained as an alias).

    However, in this case I very much doubt that there is any likelihood
    at all of changing "Ancient Greek Numbers" to "Ancient Greek
    Numerals". As with character names, block names are primarily an
    identifying label, and there is little point in quibbling about the
    semantics of words like "number".

    > By pointing this out to the list, will this advice get to the powers that
    > be, or do I need to contact someone specifically?

    This list is frequented by the "powers that be", but is not
    specifically monitored for suggestions that people may have. If you do
    want to report a perceived error then you should use the the official
    reporting form at <http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html>. But note
    that decisions are made on the basis of discussion by the Unicode
    Technical Committee, and not simply because one person says that is
    how it should be.

    Andrew



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