Re: more flexible pipeline for new scripts and characters

On 11/16/2011 07:25 AM, Asmus Freytag wrote:
> Peter,
>
> in principle, the idea of a provisional status is a useful concept
> whenever one wants to "publish" something based on potentially doubtful
> or possibly incomplete information. And you are correct, that, in
> principle, such an approach could be most useful whenever there's no
> possibility of correcting some decision taking in standardization.
>
> Unicode knows the concept of a provisional property, which works roughly
> in the manner you suggested. However, for certain types of information
> to be standardized, in particular the code allocation and character
> names, it would be rather problematic to have extended provisional
> status. The reason is that once something is exposed in an
> implementation, it enables users to create documents. These documents
> would all have to be "provisional", because they would become obsolete
> once a final (corrected or improved) code allocation were made.
>
> The whole reason that some aspects of character encoding are "write
> once" (can never be changed) is to prevent such obsolete data in documents.
>
> Therefore, the only practical way is that of having a bright line
> between proposed allocations (that are not implemented and are under
> discussion) and final, published allocations that anyone may use.
> Instead of a provisional status, the answer would seem to lie in making
> the details of proposed allocations more accessible for review during
> the period where they are under consideration and balloting in the
> standardization committee.
>
> One possible way to do that would be to make repertoire additions
> subject to the "Public Review" process.
>
> Another would be for more interested people to become members and to
> follow submissions as soon as they hit the Unicode document registry.
>
> The former is much more labor-intensive and I suspect not something the
> Consortium could easily manage with the existing funding and resources.
> The latter would have the incidental benefit of adding to the funding
> for the work of the Consortium by providing some additional funding via
> from membership fees.
>
> A./
>

How is this different from Named sequences, which are published
provisionally?
Received on Fri Nov 18 2011 - 15:34:40 CST