> Here is my proposed writeup, so far, on the oversized sigma
> character. I got a response from Markus Kuhn who suggested increased
> unification in order to avoid context dependencies in legacy->Unicode
> conversion (the legacy charsets being more a collection of glyphs than
> anything else), but from looking at the items that are already
> approved for Unicode 3.2, I believe we already have to deal with such
> context dependencies, and I would rather stick to one design.
>
The UTC tends to require strong arguments against unification. But I
think your wording sidesteps the problem by stating that these glyphs
are strictly for use with each other, and are not intended for any other
general purpose. Any unification would raise the question of
character-alignment properties: so far an unknown concept.
Still, it would be useful to find out what DEC had in mind for these
glyphs. Unfortunately I was never able to find anybody at (or once at)
DEC who was privy to the design of DEC Tech, nor am I aware of any
written guidelines for its use.
In any case, I'd recommend you drop the value-laden term, "legacy",
in favor of something more neutral and respectful, like "traditional",
"original", or whatever. Remember, today's hot stuff is tomorrow's
trash, and whatever we do today will soon be held in as much contempt
as we have now for all that preceded Unicode.
> The main open issue relates to the oversize bra and ket symbols in HP
> Math8; that character set seems to include the capability to
> synthesize oversized bra and ket symbols using the
> oversized sigma middle and diagonal glyphs, plus one additional glyph
> looking like the sigma middle reversed. At this point I haven't
> complicated the proposal by trying to add those characters.
>
If you don't include them now, somebody will have to propose them
eventually. And they do fit here. Better to tie them to characters
you have proposed to ensure they DO fit.
Finally, I'd recommend you state that these character should go into the
BMP, along with the other terminal characters, so they can be used in
Windows 95 and 98.
- Frank
-
Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
