RE: (no subject)

From: Keutgen, Walter (walter.keutgen@be.unisys.com)
Date: Fri Mar 03 2006 - 14:33:52 CST

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    Elaine,

    alternatively you may read Chapter 2 of the Unicode standard: http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch02.pdf.

    I understand that you are a novice in the area. Both explanations are difficult to read then, this the more that the Unicode character set is a unification of all previous computer character sets to which regularly new characters are added since the initial release.

    Regarding your first reduction of a character set being a alphabet + something else, you should note that all (not really all) older computer character sets support at least basic Latin (a-z, A-Z), decimal digits (0-9) and some other signs (space +-*/=,.:;#$ ...), with the same encoding values. The differences are in the further encoding values which support Greek OR Hebrew OR Cyrillic OR Arabic OR Japanese OR Chinese OR modified Latin versions etc. AND a variable set of symbols (curly " or ' ...), but never two writing systems other than basic Latin at once. Hence the need of unification in our globalization time, for which Unicode was created.

    Let us try the list of 15:

    Search in the Unicode Standard glossary http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/b1.pdf for:

    letter
    script
    alphabet
    abjad
    syllabary
    ideograph
    character
    character set
    digit
    symbol
    guillemets
    dingbats
    code
    code point
    ASCII
    EBCDIC
    encoded character set
    phoneme
    grapheme
    glyph
    rendering
    font
    plain text
    rich text

    This makes already 25. You might want to find definitions in less technical sources (first?) like Wikipedia.

    Best regards

    Walter

    -----Original Message-----
    From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Mike Ayers
    Sent: vendredi, le 3 mars 2006 20:08
    To: E. Keown
    Cc: unicode@unicode.org
    Subject: Re: (no subject)

    E. Keown wrote:

    > There must be 15 core terms needed for a
    > mini-dictionary for character set work. But which 15?

            Why 15?

    > Marc Kuester of DIN told me that German-language
    > proposals include what he calls a "Fachwörterliste," a
    > list of terminology to harmonize usage in all German
    > technical documents. Great idea!

            http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr17

            Really, you didn't know about it?

    > As you know, the Hebrew language has been written for
    > 3,150 years, at least. There are four living languages
    > which were written for over 2,900 years:
    > Aramaic
    > Chinese
    > Greek
    > Hebrew

            Egyptian...?

    >
    <SNIP/>
    >

            I love the smell of dead horse in the morning!

    /|/|ike

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