Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2000 11:01:18 +1000 From: Patryk Zadarnowski <patrykz@ilion.eu.org> To: Alex Belits <abelits@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us> Cc: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>, Jason <nordwick@scam.xcf.berkeley.edu>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Unicode on FreeBSD Message-ID: <200004060101.LAA05805@mycenae.ilion.eu.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 05 Apr 2000 17:21:07 MST." <Pine.LNX.4.20.0004051710000.15489-100000@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us>
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> On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, G. Adam Stanislav wrote: > > > > Lack of extensibility and variants. Don't they just love the great > > >extensibility means aka non-standardized and non-standardizable "private > > >use area" that defeats the whole idea of having a standard charset? > > > > Absurd! The private use area is for application specific usage. > > Suppose you want to design a database of cleaning supplies. You create > > a font for the use with your application, which will draw soap, mop, > > towel, and things like that. These are not in Unicode, and your odds > > of convincing the Consortium to include them are slim. So, your > > application will assign points within the private use are to soap, > > mop, towel, etc. > > This is what it was intended for, however this is not how it is used. I > understand why Unicode Consortium is unlikely to include Klingon alphabet > into "blessed" by them charset, however the use of private area for > Klingon is hardly application-specific. When instead of fictional (even > though relatively well-known) charset the question is about the > representation of "obscure" or even hypothetic details of some real-world > charset, things become much more hairy. Labeling of charsets and languages > in multiple-charsets environment (even if in the case of Klingon the > "charset" is Unicode with something added in the private area) can > eliminate ambigiuty without involving ISO, Unicode consortium, etc. and > without destabilizing "standards" by constant changes. Can it? People have been begging ISO to standarise 8 bit charsets for ages. If you tried to exchange information in polish in the pre-8859 days, you'd know why (about five radically different charsets in common use) Besides, if the alphabet for information interchange doesn't deserve standarising, I don't know what does. Pat. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Patryk Zadarnowski University of New South Wales <pat@ia64.org> School of Computer Science and Engineering -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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