From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Wed Apr 28 2004 - 22:12:49 EDT
Language Analysis Systems, Inc. Unicode list reader wrote:
>There's been a lot of discussion of the PUA in this forum over the time
>I've been on it, but I don't think I've heard anyone make the following
>point:
>
>If you're using the PUA outside a closed system, you're not using
>Unicode.
>
>The PUA is intended for the internal use of applications (or groups of
>applications), or for interchange between applications by private
>agreement of all parties involved. Writing a document in Microsoft Word
>using some exotic script that doesn't have plain-vanilla behavior
>violates this because Microsoft Word isn't a party to the private
>agreement. You either have to write software yourself that does the
>right thing with your characters (you don't have to rewrite Windows, but
>you might have to rewrite Word, which I agree isn't really any more
>realistic).
>
But then you run afoul of Peter Kirk's point, which I have to admit has
merit: if I want to use the "default properties" that Word *does*
support for the PUA, it's no problem: it will just work, even if
technically I'm relying on properties that I ought to be defining
myself. But if my script uses other properties, I'm SOL. It does seem
awfully slanted: it's easy to use for some but not other scripts (and
I'm not talking about complex scripts like CJK or whatever).
>Of course, if you're going to try to standardize a use of the PUA, it
>seems to make just as much sense to standardize the actual characters in
>Unicode in the normal way.
>
Tell that to the Klingon folks. Just because WE want to standardize
something in the PUA doesn't mean we can convince the Unicode Consortium.
~mark
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