Re: Rejected decimal separator (former Re: On the possibility of encoding some localizable sentences in plane 7)

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Sat Jan 29 2011 - 12:23:42 CST

  • Next message: Philippe Verdy: "Re: On the possibility of encoding some localizable sentences in plane 7 (from Re: On the possibility of encoding webdings in Unicode)"

    On 1/29/2011 6:01 AM, Frédéric Grosshans wrote:
    > Le samedi 29 janvier 2011 à 01:38 -0800, Asmus Freytag a écrit :
    >> The localizability aspect won't help your argument here, because
    >> Unicode
    >> has rejected earlier, and much more modest proposals for localizable
    >> numeric punctuation, the *Decimal Separator* which would have been
    >> equivalent to Period of Comma depending on locale. Unicode's mandate
    >> therefore explicitly excludes localizable content.
    >>
    > Just out of couriosity, when was it proposed/rejected ? I do not find
    > the rejection in http://www.unicode.org/alloc/nonapprovals.html , where
    > I think it would fit nicely.

    Looks like it would. It was rather early in the process that the
    proposal came. The decision was made to reject it. For punctuation it is
    always tempting to encode based on function, because punctuation, more
    than words, are parsed by software, in a way that requires making
    distinctions. And many punctuation characters have a bewildering array
    of meanings based on context.

    The period is one of the worst.

    Sentence ending, abbreviation mark,separator,decimal point, and the list
    goes on.

    It was recognized early that this would be a bad idea.

    Nowadays, with a better understanding of security issues, any character
    that could be used for spoofing like that is out of the question.

    A./



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