So to date, Unicode has only made half its way, and for every single script in the
Standard there is another script out there that remains still unsupported.
First things first. When I first replied in the first thread of this year I already
warned:
>>> Having said that, still unsupported minority languages are top priority.
I didn’t guess that I opened a Pandora box whose content would lead us
far away from the only useful goal deeply embedded in the concept of
Unicode: support all of the world’s writing systems.
You will find that the existing Unicode
support for 28+ modern scripts is
sufficient to cover the languages that are in everyday written
use and likely
to remain so, because they are formally taught to the next
generation.
There are a handful of additional scripts,
also already encoded, that would
cover languages for which such written use is emerging or
re-emerging.
The rest of Unicode scripts plus scripts yet
to be encoded are about
preservation and capture of existing written records, or
transcription of
languages in predominantly spoken use, not primarily about
supporting active everyday communication of language users.
As with all complex scenarios, there may be
this or that edge case that
the generalization above doesn't adequately cover. However, the
fact
remains that encoding of additional scripts affects a different
realm of
usage.
Extensions contemplated that impact everyday
communication (as
those discussed on a parallel thread here) are therefore
potentially
useful on a very practical level to users of majority and
minority languages
living today. Therefore, the implication that only the
additional coverage
of dead scripts, or transcription of endangered languages is a
useful goal rings a bit false.
It's a very worthwhile goal, but so is making improvements to
those aspects
of Unicode that widely figure in everyday communication of
living populations.
A./
PS: of course, if a contemplated change,
such as the one alluded to, should be ill
advised, its negative effects could have wide ranging
impacts...but that's
not the topic here.
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