From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Fri Jul 11 2003 - 08:56:27 EDT
On Friday, July 11, 2003 1:12 PM, Kent Karlsson <kentk@cs.chalmers.se> wrote:
> > Note also: the Soft_Dotted property was created and considered
> > specially for Turkish and Azeri.
>
> Adding to the long, and unfortunately getting longer, list of
> misleading statements from Philippe! No, the reason for the
> Soft_Dotted property was/is to mark which characters (regardless of
> language) that don't display intrinsic dot(s) above subglyph(s)
> when (another) combining character above
> is applied to it (and to then keep the dot(s) a combining dot above
> or a combining diaeresis, as appropriate, must be used explicitly).
I don't know how I can say, with my limited English, things without
being always accused of creating misleading things.
Correct things if you think my words create possible confusion in
their interpretation, but please don't over-exhibit them. I don't know
how non-English native writers can participate here if all differences
of interpretations caused by possible use of inappropriate English
terms are answered with flame. This is really frustrating...
The important words in my sentence is "considered specially",
where "specially" does not imply "only". It's just that Turkish and
Azeri are already given special treatment in Unicode, which already
includes language exceptions in its technical algorithms (notably
for character foldings).
And according to this treatment, the U+0069 character is already
intended to have a semantic value of a dotted <i> and not a dotless
<i> in languages where this creates a semantic difference, so the
question of the "Soft_Dotted" property is more glyphic than purely
semantic, and it has a semantic behavior (at the abstract text
level where Unicode is supposed to standardize things) mostly in
case folding operations where the actual encoding of the converted
abstract text is important.
The rest of the description of the Soft_Dotted property is mostly a
recommandation for authors of fonts and text renderers, so that
they should *preserve this semantic difference* in the rendered text
between abstract letters dotted and dotless <i>'s... And this does
not affect the encoding of the abstract text or any algorithmic
transformation of the encoded abstract text.
By saying "preserve this semantic difference*, I do not imply that
the U+0069 must/should have a dot above: it remains a font design
problem, out of scope of Unicode. There are certainly many ways
to preserve the semantic difference in the rendered text when this
is really appropriate (for example in Turkish and Azeri, or with a
distinct and emphasized rendering of the Turkish dot, including
in possible ligatures with other letters).
<FLAME-OFF>
And please, do not flame me if this message contains new
terms that also create confusion. I can reread the best I can,
and there are certainly other better ways to say the same thing
in English without these unintentional confusive interpretations,
and I am sorry by advance that such confusion still persist.
Accept the fact that I'm not a Unicode member and Unicode
is only one of my interests, and I have a lot of other
terminologies with which I have to work with.
If you can't accept that approximative English language may
be used by participants here, and refuse to understand the
real intent of users when they write here, then have this
group be moderated, but don't say it is open to discussions
from anybody using Unicode.
For normative aspects, with all exact terms, Unicode has its
web site, its publications, its data files, its working draft
documents, its technical committees, its permanent members,
its chaimans, and even bug&comment report forms to
interact with users at the normative level.
And I am sure that permanent Unicode members do not even
need this newsgroup to exchange their work on normative
documents that are directly sent to the working committee
bureaus, or via private email, phone calls, snail letters, or
their own web sites.
Please don't expect the same linguistic level quality here.
Also don't complain if my messages are long, but the constant
critics about what I am "supposed" to "imply", gives me no
other choice than explaining always what I mean, and this is
particularly lengthy, and really boring in a newsgroup.
</FLAME-OFF>
Thanks for your patience.
-- Philippe.
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