RE: WORD JOINER vs ZWNBSP

On Sun, Jun 28, 2015, Peter Constable
wrote:

> Marcel: Can you please clarify in what way Windows 7 is not supporting U+2060.

On my netbook, which is running Windows 7 Starter, U+2060 is not a part of any of the shipped fonts. Arial Unicode MS does not contain U+2060 because this is posterior to Unicode 2.0 (WJ has been encoded in 3.2), and unfortunately Arial Unicode MS despite of being one of the completest fonts worlwide, seems not to have been updated since its release based on Unicode 2.0. Consolas which is so complete it contains even U+202F while lt's a monospaced font, and which does contain also U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROHPE, has no U+2060, but well U+FEFF. Knowing that whenever an unavailable character occurs, Windows searches for it in all fonts that are installed on the machine, I deduced that U+2060 is not a part of Windows 7 Starter and, by legitimate extrapolation, of Windows 7 on the whole. In any case, when your computer is a netbook, you couldn't choose to get another Windows version since Windows Starter is designed for netbooks. I know that other operating systems, say other Windows versions, are shipped with a significantly bigger number of fonts, but I won't program a keyboard layout which cannot work on every machine running any Windows version from 7 upwards.

I guess I've been suspected still to blame Microsoft even when there's no reason, so I underscore that I do not have the least need of U+2060, because for word processing purposes, U+FEFF works very well for me and surely for everybody who is using Windows. I add this precision because outside I use another OS which seemingly does not support U+02BC, by not having this character in any current font. Additionally I mention that I've read that my netbook does not run well under the other OS, so I've little temptation of using other than Windows.

There might be however a reason to prefer U+2060 over U+FEFF, which I cannot test. The issue is the following:
Further tests showed that U+FEFF is an unstable character, even more unstable than U+00A0 which at least is replaced with something (U+0020) when formatted text is converted to plain text, while U+FEFF simply disappears. This phenomenon is observed as well inside a word processor as between this and a text editor (whether the file format be UTF-8 or Unicode). If you wish to reproduce the tests, you may need the information that I used Microsoft Word Starter 2010 and Windows NotePad. Indeed I believe that we are in front of a widespread general misfunctioning. U+00A0 is currently used in French as a punctuation space (by that I mean, current word processors add U+00A0 before » ? ! ; : and after «.
[I know that the Unicode Punctuation Space is U+2008, that this is not designed for use with French punctuations, that U+202F is preferred with punctuations, that U+202F is not present in all fonts, therefore word processors cannot insert it by default, therefore U+00A0 stays in use and readers are accustomed to it.]
When such text files with plenty of U+00A0, turning around between processes, end up to be converted to plain text, they become unusable. I mean that before using them, all instances where U+00A0 had be replaced with U+0020, must be corrected, whether by replacing U+0020 with the preferred U+202F, or with U+00A0 again (e.g. inside of names). Well, U+FEFF is roughly the same thing, it must be readded, which may prove much harder to achieve. In my tests, even if not recognized, U+2060 proved to be stable, but I wonder what would be its fate if the system knew i'is "just" a word joiner.

Regards,
Marcel Schneider
 

> Message du 28/06/15 01:38
> De : "Peter Constable"

> A : "Petr Tomasek" , "Marcel Schneider"
> Copie à : "Unicode Mailing List"
> Objet : RE: WORD JOINER vs ZWNBSP
>
> Marcel: Can you please clarify in what way Windows 7 is not supporting U+2060.
>
>
> Peter
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Unicode [mailto:unicode-bounces_at_unicode.org] On Behalf Of Petr Tomasek
> Sent: Friday, June 26, 2015 4:48 PM
> To: Marcel Schneider
> Cc: Unicode Mailing List
> Subject: Re: WORD JOINER vs ZWNBSP
>
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 12:48:39PM +0200, Marcel Schneider wrote:
> >
> > However, despite of the word joiner having been encoded and recommended since version 3.2 of the Standard, it is still not implemented on Windows 7. Therefore I must use the traditional zero width no-break space U+FEFF instead.
>
> Therefore you should complain by Microsoft, not here.
>
> > Supposing that Microsoft choose not to implement U+2060 WJ
>
> Then you should probably choose another operating system which does...
>
> Petr Tomasek

[If you read this, please refer to my reply at:

http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2015-m06/0216.html

 
Received on Tue Jun 30 2015 - 04:03:31 CDT