From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Fri Jun 06 2003 - 11:14:48 EDT
From: "Philippe Verdy" <verdy_p@wanadoo.fr>
> If would be interesting to add some informative appendixes to Unicode
> and later make them normative, to clearly state the subset of
> characters that MUST be supported for each written language, and a
> list of legacy equivalents that should be interpreted the same as
> their recommanded encoding in the context of that language.
Interesting, perhaps, but such a list could never be normative. Unicode
does not regulate the use of written languages.
Moreover, there is *always* disagreement on what characters MUST be
supported, no matter how obvious it may seem. For example, you will
always find someone who claims that the curly quotes U+201C and U+201D
are "required" in English, because good typography demands them.
(English text in ASCII using U+0022 QUOTATION MARK for both left and
right quotes is not good typography, but there is no question that it is
English.)
An extensive list of European languages and the characters they use can
be found in Michael Everson's "The Alphabets of Europe," at
http://www.evertype.com/alphabets/index.html. Michael cites "definitive
and authoritative reference works" and "literature of well-informed
writers," but I would still be surprised if he claimed the repertoires
could be "normative" in some way.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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