From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Fri May 12 2006 - 19:19:16 CDT
Karl Pentzlin asked:
> Am Freitag, 12. Mai 2006 um 21:04 schrieb Kenneth Whistler:
>
> KW> The ROK National Body has indicated interest in the context
> KW> of the WG2 meetings in bringing in a proposal for adding
> KW> more jamo characters. Given the approximate number of jamos
> KW> they have been talking about -- which would be intended for
> KW> representation of Old Hangul choseong, jungseong, and jongseong --
> KW> the Roadmap additions are simply preliminary allocations of
> KW> a matching number of columns.
>
> If only "Old" Hangul needs these jamos, and if they are in fact not
> needed for contemporary Korean, why are these characters not
> roadmapped to go into the SMP, as the available gaps in the BMP
> have become somewhat small?
Well, first of all, they will be needed for contemporary *implementations*
of Korean, even if the jamos in question would only appear in
Old Korean syllables. The problem is that nobody is going to
implement Korean *twice* -- once for modern Korean and separately
for Old Korean. The intent here -- as best I can tell -- is for
Korean implementations to simply be able to deal with all of
the repertoire, including the old syllabic forms.
Second, all of the Old Korean syllables can be represented by
existing combinations of jamos, which are already on the BMP
in the 1100 block. The issue for the ROK has to do with the
structure of resulting syllables, normalization, and so on, but
whatever new combined jamos for Old Hangul might be added will be akin
to jamos already existing in the 1100 block.
Third, whenever possible a *script* is not split across planes.
Of course, Han itself is an exception, because of the huge size
of the Han repertoire, but no other *script* has had historic
extensions relegated to the SMP simply because they were historic,
at least not yet. And if you are looking for violations of plane
functions based on contemporary versus historic usage, look first
to the log in thy eye! The Latin script just got a huge collection
of medievalist characters added, on the *BMP* in the Latin Extended-D
block. Those, too, have no contemporary usage, but are on the BMP
because the rest of Latin is there already.
Fourth, what else is a reasonable candidate for filling the
gap at the end of the Hangul Syllables block: U+D7A4..U+D7FF?
That range is essentially dead air on the BMP unless used for
these jamos. There are also 16 code points available in the
U+1100 block itself. That probably won't be enough, however -- hence
the roadmapping of some columns at A4C0..A4FF. We'll see what
is actually needed if and when a real proposal shows up from
Korea.
--Ken
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