Re: Old Hungarian at SC2/WG2

From: André Szabolcs Szelp (a.sz.szelp@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 29 2009 - 12:36:00 CST

  • Next message: Peter Constable: "RE: Old Hungarian at SC2/WG2"

    Dear Peter,

    Bakonyi's proposal's fault is very simple to explain.

    It only encodes a small subset of historic signs which he feels to be
    "the true script".
    It's as if you'd only encode the 23 capital letters used by the old
    Romans ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXYZ instead of the whole Latin range with
    J, W, minuscules, diacritics, etc. saying that that is the "true"
    Latin script.

    If you're asking for which Unicode principles it runs against, it is,
    rather than being descriptive, trying to reinforce his personal view
    on what users ought to be allowed to use.

    Bakonyi's proposal is -- in general -- not necessary to be considered,
    as it is a true subset of both alternative proposals (as it has been
    demonstrated by N3532: Mapping between Old Hungarian proposals in
    N3531, N3527, and N3526 by Michael Everson.

    The question of Gábor Hosszú's proposal is slightly less trivial, but
    it can be summed up saying that it counters Unicode principles by
    encoding a large number of precomposed ligatures wich cannot be
    analyzed as characters in their own right. Moreover, the
    (presentational) ligature composition in the script in question is a
    completely open system, his set of precomposed ligatures is a pretty
    arbitrary selection (motivated by HG's 15-or-so years old 8-bit
    Latin-1-hacked TTF font's coverage of them).

    --Szabolcs

    3/29 Peter Constable <petercon@microsoft.com>
    >
    > Has a doc been submitted to WG2 explaining in what ways Bakonyi Gábor's proposal runs counter to Unicode / UCS character encoding principles? If so, what is the doc number in the WG2 register?
    >
    > Peter
    >
    > ________________________________________
    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Joó Ádám [ceriak@gmail.com]
    > Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 3:11 PM
    > To: eik@iki.fi
    > Cc: unicore@unicode.org; Unicode List
    > Subject: Re: Old Hungarian at SC2/WG2
    >
    > Dear Erkki,
    >
    > I personally met Bakonyi Gábor on 20th February and discussed this
    > matter. Unfortunately I have to say that he’s totally unwilling to
    > make any compromises, which, considering the lack of respect towards
    > Unicode’s and general character encoding principles in his proposal,
    > as well as ignoring user needs, leads to the conclusion that we can no
    > longer consider his proposition as a real alternative.
    >
    > I’m not happy about that, and I can only hope that WG2 has the wisdom
    > and goodwill not to further set back the encoding of Old Hungarian,
    > already pending for more than 10 years now, just because the presence
    > of multiple inadequate proposals.
    >
    >
    > Best regards,
    > Ádám
    >

    --
    Szelp, André Szabolcs
    +43 (650) 79 22 400
    


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