From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sat Oct 22 2005 - 17:25:56 CST
From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com>
> Actually, the statement 'Based on TIS 620-2529' in the character chart
> reinforces the identity.
"Based on" does not mean that it directly maps the standard with a simple
code translation. This is not stated anywhere in the standard.
Also, how can it come that a Thai standard applies to the Lao script? I did
not know that TIS defined a standard for writing Lao as well. I should have
noticed and remembered this line at the top of the Lao chart, but I wonder
if it is really correct, or if this was a sort of "unification" by Unicode
and ISO/IEC 10646 they they studied both scripts simultaneously and decided
to encode them with the same encoding scheme based on the Thai standard.
If so, this may explain the confusion introduced in Lao: the Lao script was
encoded by too many non-experts, that were only expert in Thai. This gives
some lessons for encoding further scripts or letters: their normative names
should be first submitted in a public review before they are voted. The
principles of encoding should already be there, as well as the number of
letters to accept, but this beta phase is necessary before final approval.
There are too few people involved in the voting process at the ISO working
group, whose work is too much opaque for the general public, as it is only
open to governmental representants. So if there are new votes in the ISO
10646 pipe, I really suggest that some voting ISO members publish the paper
they have to vote on, to receive informed public review before they can
effectively vote.
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