Re: Character repertoire and Graphic character repertoire

From: Keld J|rn Simonsen (keld@dkuug.dk)
Date: Thu Oct 09 1997 - 11:35:27 EDT


John Clews writes:

> Character repertoire and Graphic character repertoire
> (Was: Re: Repertoire, encoding, and representation;
> formerly Was: Charsets + encoding + codesets)
>
>
> Keld had written via unicode@unicode.org:
>
> > > You can both have a 10646 encoding and an 10646 repertoire...
> > >
> > > The trouble is that the "repertoire" of Unicode and 10646 is different.
>
> Ken Whistler wrote, in response to Keld Simonsen, in message
> <9710070110.AA03013@unicode.org> via unicode@unicode.org:
>
> > I'll state this one more time, because Keld keeps claiming it isn't
> > so:
> >
> > The repertoire of the Unicode Standard and of ISO/IEC 10646 are
> > *exactly* the same.
>
>
> The argument between Ken Whistler and Keld Simonsen surely derives
> from different (and equally valid) understandings of the word
> repertoire, and possibly of character and graphic character.

Well, I actualy think Ken and I agree on what "repertoire" means.
Namely in ISO speak: a set of characters, in Unicode speak: a
set of abstract characters. And as the ISO "character" and
Unicode "abstract character" are defined pretty equivalently,
I think I can say that we actually here have agreement on the
concepts. And I do think the word "abstract" clarifies the concept.

> ISO/IEC 10646 defines repertoire thus:
>
> Repertoire: a specified set of characters that are represented in a
> coded character set (clause 4.28)
>
> ISO/IEC 10646 defines character thus:
>
> character: a member of a set of elements used for the organisation,
> control or representation of data (clause 4.6). To me, this seems to
> corespond to the term code-point, rather than including abstract
> characters.

There has been a long history of this definition in SC2 and
the term definitely does not mean "code point". It is the abstract
thing that is being meant. An ISO "character" does not have any
code point assignment.

Keld



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:37 EDT