MIRROR emoji

[Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode]

  
  
I peek in on the various proposals on the document register from
  time to time, and it is only with some effort that I restrain
  myself from sending this list some sort of checklist with my
  crochety-old-man opinions on most of them as if anyone cared.  But
  I do have a thought to raise regarding the proposed MIRROR emoji.


It's just that it seems to me that a wall-mirror and a
  hand-mirror have rather different connotations and are so unalike
  in kind that it would be weird not to disunify them, or at the
  very least to stipulate clearly which one of them is being
  accepted.  Some of the meanings/connotations of MIRROR in the
  proposal seem to me to be mostly true of HAND MIRRORs, not so much
  ones on the wall or freestanding.  These include vanity and
  primping.


Just a thought.  It looks like the accepted sample glyph is a
  freestanding or wall mirror; I just think that it should be
  stipulated in the notes.  Not sure how well I could defend that
  feeling.


~mark

  

Choice between Identical Tai Tham Characters

[Richard Wordingham via Unicode]

What authoritative recommendations or injunctions have been given for
choosing between the encodings  and  for the
subscript character known natively as 'hang ba'?  The choice has no
implication as to glyph shape or the pronunciation of the character, and
the only difference in Unicode-associated properties is that the
difference is a primary difference in the DUCET default and CLDR root
collations.

It is quite conceivable that a prescribed choice may be intended to
distinguish homophonous homographs, e.g. ᩈᩣ᩠ᨷ 'bad smell' v. 'curse',
which are usually spelt differently in Northern Thai in the Thai script
and are spelt differently in Thai (สาบ v. สาป).

This subscript consonant is used in all the languages that regularly use
the script.

I can think of some common sense rules such as, "A Pali writing system
should use only one of U+1A37 and U+1A38", but it's not impossible that
even this has been overridden.

The Khmer script has a similar issue with COENG DA and COENG TA, but
between them they represent two different sounds, and TUS recommends
that the encoding be chosen on the basis of the sound.

Richard.