From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Mon Jan 12 2009 - 03:20:58 CST
On 1/11/2009 5:14 PM, Doug Ewell wrote:
>
> In http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2009-m01/0077.html I
> asked for a pointer to a full definition of "compatibility character"
> in the Unicode 5.x text that would cover "a character that is
> *completely unrelated* to any other character in the standard but is
> encoded due to 'interoperability needs.'"
No need to look very far - just check chapter 2 under compatibility
character. (You could have easily found out for yourself, since the text
is online).
>
> I have not yet seen one, and as I said at the time, that strongly
> implies that the existing definitions are being pulled and stretched
> on an ad-hoc basis to achieve the end goal of encoding this particular
> set of pictures.
I couldn't agree with you there. This accusation is rather unfounded.
A./
PS: here's a quite from a recent post on another list, where,
confusingly enough, the same discussion is taking place in parallel.
> If you read the discussion in chapter two of the Standard, it states
> that what you are concerned with are a "second narrow sense" of
> "compatibility character" and goes on to define a term for this
> restricted category "compatibility decomposable character".
>
> Compatibility characters, in the broad sense, are all characters that
> are not ordinary characters (my term) but were included in the
> standard because of the 10th design principle, *convertibility*, which
> is also described in chapter 2.
>
> In the current proposal, a large number of characters clearly could
> qualify as "ordinary" characters. I agree, that these would not be
> compatibility characters under any definition, and that therefore, it
> is incorrect to consider the *entire* set of emoji as compatibility
> characters, even if it is true that the set as a whole is proposed for
> reasons of convertibility (10th principle).
>
> The remainder of the set, however, are compatibility characters as
> that term has been understood in Unicode from the beginning, even
> though none, or at most very few, would be "compatibility decomposable
> characters".
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