Re: Overloading Unicode

From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Sat Jun 05 2010 - 23:17:42 CDT

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Overloading Unicode"

    On 06/05/2010 07:18 PM, Doug Ewell wrote:
    > "William_J_G Overington" <wjgo underscore 10009 at btinternet dot com>
    > wrote:
    >> I feel that the encoding of a portable interpretable object code into
    >> Unicode could be an infrastructural step forward towards great
    >> possibilities for the future.

    And I think therein lies the problem. It's tempting to say "Ooooh, I
    have a great idea, and if Unicode would go along with it, all kinds of
    neat things would follow!" The trouble is, that puts the Unicode
    Consortium in the position of somehow having to judge which ideas might
    possibly have merit in the future and which will not. And if you think
    it feels unfair *now*, when they're just saying "your idea is out of
    scope," imagine how it would feel if they were saying "your idea is
    in-scope, but we don't think it's cool enough." It isn't and should not
    be the Unicode Consortium's job to sort through incoming ideas and
    decide which ones are nifty enough to encode.

    Unicode isn't here to make your dreams come true. It's here to encode
    what's there and to enable people to do what they've already been doing,
    not what you think it would be cool if they did. Yes, that creates a
    chicken-and-egg problem (believe me, I know from attempts to get Klingon
    encoded). But that's what the PUA is for.

    ~mark



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