On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 04:22:30 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I just have a hard time believing that 50 years from now our grandchildren > won't look back, "What were they thinking? So it took them a couple of > years to figure out canonical ordering and normalization; why on earth > didn't they work that out first before setting things in stone, rather > than saddling us with this hodgepodge of ad hoc workarounds? How short > sighted." As Rick said, I know this will get shot down; don't bother > telling me so.
I have to agree 100% with Peter on this. The potential fiasco with regards to Mongolian Free Variation Selectors is another area where our grandchildren are going to be weeping with despair if we are not careful. The standardized variants for Mongolian were set in stone by Unicode based on an unfortunate but understandable misunderstanding of the infamous TR170, and now that it is apparent from Chinese and Mongolian sources that Unicode had got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick (the defined standardized variants are actually intended for use in isolation only, and the same MFVS that selects one variant form in isolation may be used to select a completely different variant within running text ... which of course it can't according to the Standardized Variants document), instead of just wiping the slate clean and redefining a new and consistant set of standardized variants that correspond to actual usage within China and Mongolia, Unicode is determined to preserve the original erroneous standardised variants come hell or high water - even though no-one has ever seriously used them yet (well, the Chinese and Mongolians will go ahead and do it their way whatever Unicode decides). And before Peter suggests it, I have already suggested elsewhere that if Unicode can't fix past errors, the only course might be for Unicode to deprecate the MFVSs, and start again from scratch - didn't go down too well! Andrew
