Proposal to change the script allocation rules for the BMP and SMP

From: Karl Pentzlin (karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de)
Date: Wed Oct 29 2008 - 03:06:12 CST

  • Next message: Kenneth Whistler: "Re: Proposal to change the script allocation rules for the BMP and SMP"

    I consider to sumbit the following proposal.
    Any opinions?

    (Note: If I will in fact submit it, I will do it by a new mail to L2.)

    - Karl Pentzlin 

    --
Proposal to change the script allocation rules for the BMP and SMP
It is proposed to close the BMP for new scripts which are not
included in PDAM7 as of Oct. 2008 or earlier ISO/IEC 10646 amendments.
The SMP should explicitly be devised for "contemporary and historical scripts"
in a way that shows no discrimination for scripts in current use which
are assigned within the SMP.
According to the roadmap as of 2008-10-17, there are only 35 columns
(16 characters each) left which can be assigned to new blocks:
U+0860 ... U+08FF (10 columns dedicated to RTL scripts)
U+1AB0 ... U+1AFF  (5 columns, partially provisionally assigned)
U+1C80 ... U+1CCF  (5 columns)
U+2FE0 ... U+2FEF  (1 column)
U+A9E0 ... U+A9FF  (2 columns)
U+AB00 ... U+ABBF (12 columns, partially provisionally assigned)
A quick look e.g. to
http://www.languagegeek.com/
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия:Проект:Внесение_символов_алфавитов_народов_России_в_Юникод
leads to the impression that the existing 80 free code points (according to PDAM7
as of Oct. 2008) in the Latin Extended D block are not sufficient in the long term.
It is suspected that these are by far not the only lists of still unencoded letters.
Moreover, other scripts like Katakana/Hiragana may require extensions.
It is desirable that such extensions could be added to the BMP to
have them together with the already encoded letters of the scripts.
The proposal applies to the "Pahawh Hmong", "Varang Kshiti", "Sorang Sompeng",
and "Beria" currently mentioned in the Roadmap.
It also applies to the "Pollard" or "Miao" script for which preliminary
proposals are pending, which anyway is a little bit too large to fit
into the largest free gap (12 columns) in the BMP, although it is in fact
a script in current usage.
It would also apply to the "Szekler-Hungarian Rovas" as proposed on
http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3527.pdf . In this proposal, the
characters are to be scattered onto four blocks in the BMP and one block
in the SMP. As the users of this script had to use the SMP anyway, it
is felt that the user community were better served anyway by a consistent
SMP block. It should not be necessary to assign some letters in the BMP
only to acknowledge the contemporary use of the script.
btw, as the Meetei Mayek extensions (assigned in the roadmap to
U+AAE0 ... U+AAFF) are not yet contained in PDAM7, it is proposed to
move them to U+ABA0 ... ABBF, keepint the Meetei Mayek blocks together.

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