From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Sun Nov 16 2008 - 01:42:36 CST
Doug Ewell wrote:
> "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela at cs dot tut dot fi> wrote:
>
>> I think it is best to explain realistically that characters with
>> diacritic marks will not be added to Unicode as separately encoded,
>> i.e. as code points, as a matter of policy. You can say this in
>> different formulations and tones, of course. There’s no point in
>> getting into long arguments.
>
> In fairness, I can't fault Karl for wanting to provide a newcomer
> with a reasoned explanation for the policy, […]
I wasn’t faulting anyone. If you read between the lines, you’ll see that I
don’t think there is any a reasoned explanation for the policy, so it is
best to give just an explanation of the policy. You might say that a
reasoned explanation exists, but it would be just someone’s view on the
matter and, more importantly, it would be far longer and far more complex
that a newcomer wants or could follow. Remember that most people are very
confused about Unicode, even if you don’t consider diacritic marks at all.
> Newcomers hate it when we tell them, "That's just the way it is.
> Unicode won't change. Deal with it."
If that’s the truth, telling it is the best we can do to a newcomer. It’s
not a pleasant task to tell such things, of course.
In an ideal world you could add “Well, it has a reasoned explanation, but is
quite long and complex, and you need to know well the basics of Unicode and
a lot about the history of Unicode to understand it. You can find it at
http://www.unicode.org/…”
-- Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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