From: Jonathan Rosenne (jr@qsm.co.il)
Date: Fri Jul 30 2010 - 06:27:12 CDT
Why does one require implementation laws to define a code point in Unicode for a new currency symbol? And what does it have to do with ISCII or keyboard layouts or usage or non-usage by people within India or abroad?
One cannot make too many assumptions regarding usage. For example, Microsoft enforces the use if the Israeli currency symbol ₪ - by means of introducing it as a spelling correction for the common abbreviation ש"ח. In normal text many, including myself, do not want this but fortunately the solution was straightforward.
Jony
> -----Original Message-----
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On
> Behalf Of verdy_p
> Sent: Friday, July 30, 2010 1:23 PM
> To: Michael Everson; shi zhao
> Cc: unicode@unicode.org
> Subject: Re: Indian new rupee sign
>
> > De : "Michael Everson"
> > I like the video clip there. "Encoding in Indian standards will take
> about six months. Encoding in the Unicode and
> IEC standards will take about 18 months to two years."
> >
> > Sounds as though our Government of India colleagues gave them good
> advice.
> >
> > Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>
> Yes, and during that time, we'll get correct input from India, when it
> will have defined its implementation laws,
> and defined its national standard.
>
> The only emergency will come when using the symbol will be mandatory
> for residents in India (but this won't happen
> before India clearly defines its standard, and probably not before a
> transition period), or for software makers
> selling products in India.
>
> India will first need to realize that adapting the ISCII standard will
> be tricky (there is no more any common byte
> value available in its various 8-bit subtables, even if all of them
> have empty positions, so the basic one-to-one
> transliteration schemes assuming the same position for "equivalent"
> letters, digits or punctuation will not work,
> unless India abandons the positions reserved for C1 controls in the 8-
> bit version, abandonning also the 7-bit
> version of ISCII, to free the positions 0xA0 and 0xFF).
>
> Only one position in ISCII allows interoperable extension across the
> various ISCII tables (the "EXT" code which was
> reserved for Vedic extensions, but Unicode and ISO/10646 encoded them
> directly in each script by overloading the
> unused positions of the basic ISCII 1991 layout). But seriously, ISCII
> is dying... it never reached an international
> standard like ISO 8859 (it could have been, as its layout was
> compatible with it), and most softwares are ignoring
> it (possibly not in India though, and its market size is large enough
> that ISCII could survive or could be revived
> for longer time than we think).
>
> And there will be a need for a keyboard layout assignment (possibly
> replacing the old assignment for the "Rs" key if
> it exists, suggesting AltGr+R for the symbol, and modifying keyboard
> drivers so that they will return the new code
> point (if they are based on Unicode, otherwise return the ISCII bytes
> sequence).
>
> This does not mean that we must not prepare the field, even if for now
> fonts can just encode the symbol in a PUA, or
> if various systems won't accept the proposed standard code point
> assignment. There's no need to allocate the symbol
> in the Devanagari block, because it will be shared by all the Indian
> scripts and many others, this will be a generic
> currency symbol for all scripts.
>
> But the proposed U+20B9 location will be perfect, independantly of the
> allowed glyph variations for the
> representative glyph (India can vote at UTC and WG2 for the
> rpresentative glyph, its voice will be heard), it will
> have no impact on variations occuring on fonts used outside India
>
> In fact it does not matter if it is not formally approved for the
> coming Unicode 6.0 (if it's too late for the WG2
> Agenda ?) as long as there's a commitment to not encode enything else
> at this location (now or in the future), until
> India terminates its own legislation and formally requests this
> character
>
> India won't need to do that if the symbol will ONLY be used on official
> Indian banknotes or on LEGALLY APPROVED
> check forms emitted by Indian banks, or on government emissions like
> postal and fiscal stamps, or fiscal billings,
> and if there's no plan to force customers and sellers to display the
> symbol for pricing and advertizing.
>
> And internationally, India cannot force the use of the symbol, even if
> it's encoded, because other countries are
> already using the "INR" code in their interchange.
>
> India can still choose to retain its exclusive copyright on the symbol
> and protect it so that it will have a
> mandatory glyph form and metrics according to governmental decisions
> (authorization required for using it, so fonts
> including it would be illegal as they would be illegally derived works
> based on copyrighted work, and there will be
> NO place for it in the UCS where it should then be rejected).
>
>
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