From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Mon Sep 20 2004 - 15:39:49 CDT
Michael Everson responded to Christopher Fynn's question:
> At 13:46 +0100 2004-09-19, Christopher Fynn wrote:
>
> >So, am I right in assuming that were someone put together a decent
> >proposal for one or more shorthand scripts, there is no particular
> >reason in principle why it would be rejected?
>
> You are right.
There is also no particular reason why it would be accepted.
For any such proposal there needs to be a case made for why
the shorthand should be encoded as Unicode characters.
If there is a decent case that data needs to be interchanged
in one shorthand or another using plain text Unicode characters,
embedded with other Unicode text data, then an encoding would
be plausible.
However, the mere existence of a written form used to convey
textual data does not suffice to make it a good candidate for
encoding in terms of Unicode characters directly.
On the one hand, it may be that data (including that in the
machines used for shorthand recording) may be conveyed
by preexisting intermediate "encoded" representations, which
could be conveyed by existing encoded Unicode characters --
for example if they consist of conversion to streams of
letters or digits (or other arbitrary encodings).
On the other hand, representation of shorthand data directly
may be too far out of the realm of what can be conveyed
by a plain text rendering system. The analogy may be to
the issue represented by musical scoring. If so, then
an appropriate need might be demonstrated for a basic
set of underlying symbols used *by* a shorthand system,
on the assumption that higher level protocols and a dedicated
rendering system would be required for full interpretation
and display. However, before any *Unicode* encoding of such
symbols would be undertaken, a case would be need to be
made by somebody with an interest in such systems that
having a standardized Unicode encoding of the elements
of such a system would be useful and required.
In any case, I consider Unicode encoding of shorthands to
be a very low priority, compared to the effort needed
for some well-known minority and historic scripts which
are still unencoded.
For whoever said that shorthands weren't roadmapped, that
isn't completely correct. There is no specific allocation
for Gregg or Pitman or any other particular system, but
11E00..11FFF is currently blocked out for shorthands, simply
as a placeholder to indicate that we know such systems
exist and that somebody might bring forth a proposal and
that if successful, such a proposal would require some
codespace allocation.
--Ken
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