Re: Quick survey of Apple symbol fonts (in context of the Wingding/Webdingproposal)

--
Doug Ewell • doug_at_ewellic.org
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
-----Original Message-----
From: Asmus Freytag <asmusf_at_ix.netcom.com>
Sender: unicode-bounce_at_unicode.org
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:37:40 
To: Michael Everson<everson_at_evertype.com>; Unicode Mailing List<unicode_at_unicode.org>
Subject: Re: Quick survey of Apple symbol fonts (in context of the Wingding/Webding
 proposal)
On 7/15/2011 2:18 PM, Michael Everson wrote:
>> As for the others, those are chart glyphs for the ZWNJ and the ZWJ. There is no need to encode *characters* for chart glyphs.
> That's your assertion. Some other people have a different view, and think that there *is* a need to encode *characters* for chart glyphs.
>> As Asmus has already pointed out, we have been successfully talking about such characters in the standard for 20 years now.
It's not a matter of competing "views". There's a well-defined process 
for adding characters to the standard. It starts by documenting usage. 
If you can document such usage, and if it is widespread, and settled 
enough to warrant standardization to support it, then a proposal based 
on such documentation is something that should be reviewed according to 
the established process.
I don't really need to tell you this, as you are quite familiar with how 
the process works.
> Rich text and inline images in text are not at all convenient. ... I wouldn't use images anyway. I would use a PUA character. And that is not portable, so while I could use it for printing, I couldn't share it on the web.
There are many important mathematical works that use notation that is 
not widespread or settled enough to support standardization. Even though 
mathematical notation as such is supported by Unicode, it won't be 
possible to render these works in plain text. One of the works I am 
thinking of here has sold in numbers that exceed all the editions of the 
Unicode Standard  - combined. It might be convenient to have characters, 
but the fact is, the symbols in question fail some or all of the tests 
and were properly excluded from being considered as characters. Now, if 
we were to find in the future that all / many other works describing the 
same mathematical facts start making use of the same symbols, this would 
be a different matter.
So, mere "inconvenience" is not a sufficient argument to cinch a case 
for encoding characters - however keenly you feel this inconvenience. 
Neither is speculation of the kind "it might be generally useful to have 
such symbols".
However, as soon as you present *evidence* that the kind of glyph images 
you would like to use are in fact a common, shared notation and you can 
document that, the discussion will take a quite different turn. We no 
longer be discussing abstract, potential desirability of some symbols, 
but an actual character encoding proposal based on solid evidence - as 
it should be.
A./