From: Joan_Wardell@sil.org
Date: Mon Jul 28 2003 - 17:25:01 EDT
> Why can't we just fix the database? :)
Because changing the canonical ordering classes (in ways not
allowed by the stability policies) breaks the normalization
*algorithm* and the expected test results it is tested against.
If the "expected test results" are bad data, it shouldn't matter then if it
is consistent. Are you
saying that somewhere there are lots of people who have worked very hard to
implement
Hebrew as it is currently described in Unicode 3 and they would have to
"start over" if we
changed the canonical order? And the biggest fear is that the data today
won't be
consistent with the data in the new order? My point is that there *is* no
data today,
because anyone who has attempted to produce biblical Hebrew data in the
current
canonical order would have stopped and said "Wait a minute! This won't
work".
That's what I'm saying. And I have no particular problem with the CGJ
suggestion, but
it doesn't go far enough. I don't think we can use it to fix meteg, a mark
which occurs in
three different positions around a low vowel, yet is canonically ordered
before the shin/sin
dots! Will we put one CGJ on the right to indicate a right meteg and one on
the left to indicate
a left meteg? There are many other examples of problems with the current
canonical order.
The apparent simplest solution to all the problems is to correct the
canonical order.
>>Unless you
are talking about conversion algorithms for batch conversion of
existing Biblical Hebrew repositories into Unicode -- but those
are specialized code to begin with, and it is much less impact to
ask people to update the tables in those to insert a CGJ into
the point sequences than it is to ask all implementers to deal
with the consequences of broken normalization.
Yes, I am talking about the person writing a batch conversion from existing
data into
Unicode. That would be me. If you were only suggesting we insert one CGJ, I
wouldn't complain.
But we are looking at re-writing the font, the keyboards, and the
conversion so that we can
work around the numerous problems with canonical order. I am selfishly
preferring that
you "normalizers" re-write your code. :)
Joan W.
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