From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Wed Apr 13 2011 - 16:58:22 CDT
Yes, mathematicians will use anything available :)
However, only some notations will become established enough to warrant
standardization. That goes for symbols as well as for the math
alphanumerics.
If there is an established body of notation that makes a distinction not
possible today in Unicode, and especially if that leads to
interoperability issues with standards, such as MathML that are built on
Unicode, then the proper thing to do is to propose additional encoded
characters.
This also goes for symbols as well as for math alphanumerics.
Unicode will always lag the invention of new notation by a bit - that's
quite OK, and serves as a brake on innovation for innovations sake
(newly invented symbols will not immediately be first-class citizens).
Other parts of the infrastructure, like font development and
availability will also lag behind any inventions.
If an invention catches on in the field and leads to a notation shared
by many users, then, at that point, it's Unicode's role to acknowledge
this and to accommodate this development in character encoding.
That does make Unicode "open-ended", but only to the degree that writing
systems (including notational systems) aren't fixed over time. Unicode
is not designed to be open ended in the sense of supporting any use that
can be imagined, but only in the sense that it should support those uses
that have gained acceptance.
A./
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