From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu Jun 10 2004 - 14:15:33 CDT
At 07:46 AM 6/10/2004, John Cowan wrote:
>To represent the text as originally written, I need a digital representation
>for each of the characters in it. Since all I want to do is reprint
>the book -- I don't need to use the unusual characters in interchange --
>the PUA and a commissioned font seem just perfect to me.
In the modern world many forms of publication require interchange. For
example, anything that's HTML based does poorly with non-standardized
characters. So does storage in databases. If you can conceive of a digital
re-edition of a prominent work (including citation from) and can assume
that there's some realistic chance that technologies other than faximile or
PDF would be brought to bear, then you have the interchange requirement,
even if noone uses the notation for new text.
Over time, I'm becoming more supportive of Michael's stance of
inclusiveness in that direction. As a matter of basic parity, I just don't
see why we take such great pains to standardize extremely rare forms of Han
ideographs, but baulk at supporting our own writing system and its
extensions equally faithfully.
That doesn't mean that we stop asking all the hard questions, but that we
allow a presumption of usefulness for characters that were in demonstrated
use over some time and by several authors.
A./
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