William:
>Kenneth Whistler wrote as follows in response:
>
>quote
>
>This is a quibble about the usage of the terms "private" and "public"...
>end quote
>
>I respond as follows:
>
>Well, I feel that it is not a quibble. The point that I was seeking to
make
>is that the Unicode Consortium calls it a Private Use Area but once people
>start using such codes in public, then that usage is known to other people
>who may well, quite naturally, choose, out of a combination of courtesy
and
>self interest and interoperability considerations, to try to avoid using
the
>same "used" code points in the private use area, notwithstanding the rule
>that they need not bother at all to try to avoid clashes with other
people's
>public usage of the private use area.
Ken is thorough correct here: the meaning of the terminology in the
Standard is defined by the Standard. By definition, "Private" in "Private
Use Area" means "as specified by anybody other than the Unicode
Consortium".
>I feel that I have recognized an
>increasingly problematic situation and I am trying to make a suggestion
>within the unicode user community to do something about it.
Your general concern is valid. Discussion of the meaning of "Private" is a
quibble on which I'd suggest you are mistaken, and as I've already
mentioned it's my opinion that your suggestion may work perfectly well
within particular groups of users but is not a good solution for widespread
adoption.
On that point, I'll repeat my counter-proposal: I think a far better
solution would involve authors using PUA codepoints to make it clear that
they are doing so, that they make available a data file that provides the
info needed by software in order to process the author's data as the author
intended, and that that data file be in a format that is widely agreed upon
(which is also necessary in your proposal).
- Peter
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable
Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>
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