RE: RTL PUA?

Um... Computers are hardware, and don't understand a thing. What I think you mean is computer _software_. (I know, I'm being pedantic, but with good reason.)

The question is, whether you need a protocol that can be understood by _all_ computer software, or by _some_ computer software. Obviously, it is not feasible to have something that will be understood by all computer software. So, it would be _some_ computer software. But, then, I think such things exist; e.g. there appear to be ways to do this in some Mac software, and in some Graphite software.

But something tells me you expect more than that: not _all_ software; just _most_ software; or just most of the really-common-used software that gets used by people every day all over the world.

To keep this in perspective, note that 99.9999% of those people (or fewer) have no understanding or even knowledge of PUA characters, and apart from some CJK sceanrios* 99.9999% have no need to use them. (*The biggest exception is the invention of characters for personal names in places like Taiwan. But RTL is not relevant there.)

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be _some_ software that can do what you expect. But there will likely be some different views on what ought to be included within that "some".

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Ewell [mailto:doug_at_ewellic.org]
Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2011 2:20 PM
To: verdy_p_at_wanadoo.fr; Peter Constable
Cc: Michael Everson; Unicode Discussion List
Subject: Re: RTL PUA?

For once, I am in strong agreement with something Philippe had to say:

> We really need a raliable way to transport a PUA agreement in such a
way that it can be understood by a computer.

I don't necessarily agree that fonts, or (especially) any particular font technology, are the one and only way to accomplish this, because there's more to character handling than display. Maybe some sort of open format could be devised that could be used as a plug-in to a variety of existing components.

--
Doug Ewell • doug_at_ewellic.org
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