From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun Aug 28 2005 - 19:50:02 CDT
From: "Curtis Clark" <jcclark-lists@earthlink.net>
> On 2005-08-28 11:14, David Starner wrote:
>>>>To me, the criterion has always been "Does it need to be exchanged
>>>>electronically in plain text?"
>>>
>>>That's a good and clear criterion.
>>
>> I don't think it's a terribly clear criterion.
>
> The criterion itself is very clear, and "exchange", "electronic", and
> "plain text" in this context are well-understood. As John Hudson pointed
> out, it is the "need" that is slippery.
True, notably his KEY criterion which is quite clear and decisive:
"Technical symbols proper, e.g. for geometrical tolerancing, represent
mathematical relationships and concepts that cannot be so easily and
efficiently expressed in words."
* this criteria works remarkably well with company logos that must not be
encoded in standard Unicode (which are in fact better represented by their
name, but also because these logos are copyrighted and not made for general
use, such as the Apple logo character, or the Windows symbol on PC
keyboards)
* this criteria works well with APL function symbols (although they have
names, these names are in fact describing the symbol, and are not
standardized, so the effective concept is the symbol itself)
* this criteria works well with box drawing symbols (although they have
names, these names are in fact poorly describing the symbol, and are not
standardized or attested in common language, so the effective concept is the
symbol itself)
* this criteria meets also the encoding of digits as well, because they are
concepts distinct from numbers, and they allow expressing numbers that would
other wise be difficult or impractically or impossible to express in words.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Aug 28 2005 - 21:01:02 CDT