From: "Philippe Verdy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > If would be interesting to add some informative appendixes to Unicode > and later make them normative, to clearly state the subset of > characters that MUST be supported for each written language, and a > list of legacy equivalents that should be interpreted the same as > their recommanded encoding in the context of that language.
Interesting, perhaps, but such a list could never be normative. Unicode does not regulate the use of written languages. Moreover, there is *always* disagreement on what characters MUST be supported, no matter how obvious it may seem. For example, you will always find someone who claims that the curly quotes U+201C and U+201D are "required" in English, because good typography demands them. (English text in ASCII using U+0022 QUOTATION MARK for both left and right quotes is not good typography, but there is no question that it is English.) An extensive list of European languages and the characters they use can be found in Michael Everson's "The Alphabets of Europe," at http://www.evertype.com/alphabets/index.html. Michael cites "definitive and authoritative reference works" and "literature of well-informed writers," but I would still be surprised if he claimed the repertoires could be "normative" in some way. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
