Re: [OT] Flag coding (was: Re: Tags and future new technologies [...])
Doug Ewell d...@ewellic.org wrote: I think this is getting off-topic for Unicode, though I know Philippe thinks of it as the basis for a great addition to Unicode. My opinion is that Philippe has put forward a good idea and that it is worthy of serious consideration for encoding. Unicode Committees and ISO Committees could be involved. For Unicode, the code points could be encoded by the Unicode Technical Committee yet the encodings for individual flags using those code points could be carried out by another Unicode Committee, which particular committee being a matter to be decided. An interesting spin-off could be that the introduction of such an encoding could lead to the introduction of chromatic font technology by industry. William Overington 2 June 2012
Re: [OT] Flag coding (was: Re: Tags and future new technologies [...])
2012/6/2 William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com: An interesting spin-off could be that the introduction of such an encoding could lead to the introduction of chromatic font technology by industry. I've been waiting for long for fonts embedding colorful glyphs (that also contain enough information for rendering the embedded colors with monochromatic patterns, also encoded in the font as a property of its internal colormap). Such thing is still not in OpenType, but it DOES exist in other font technologies (e.g. in SVG fonts, even though this is still an unfinished standard that does not meet the technical quality observed in OpentType, but that DOES use a much simpler and coherent design than the many incoherent tricks and deprecated items found in the OpenType family, including for such basic things such as metrics data which are a nightmare to make compatible).
Re: [OT] Flag coding (was: Re: Tags and future new technologies [...])
On 6/2/2012 2:22 AM, Philippe Verdy wrote: 2012/6/2 William_J_G Overingtonwjgo_10...@btinternet.com: An interesting spin-off could be that the introduction of such an encoding could lead to the introduction of chromatic font technology by industry. I've been waiting for long for fonts embedding colorful glyphs (that also contain enough information for rendering the embedded colors with monochromatic patterns, also encoded in the font as a property of its internal colormap). While those things might be nice, the fact that this whole infrastructure doesn't exist is the clearest indication that none of these are anywhere close to being ready for encoding as characters, let alone being considered in an encoding *standard*. They continue to be solutions in search of a problem. A./
Re: [OT] Flag coding (was: Re: Tags and future new technologies [...])
On Sat, Jun 02, 2012 at 11:22:12AM +0200, Philippe Verdy wrote: 2012/6/2 William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com: An interesting spin-off could be that the introduction of such an encoding could lead to the introduction of chromatic font technology by industry. I've been waiting for long for fonts embedding colorful glyphs (that also contain enough information for rendering the embedded colors with monochromatic patterns, also encoded in the font as a property of its internal colormap). Such thing is still not in OpenType, but it DOES exist in other font technologies (e.g. in SVG fonts, even though this is still an unfinished standard that does not meet the technical quality observed in OpentType, but that DOES use a much simpler and coherent design than the many incoherent tricks and deprecated items found in the OpenType family, including for such basic things such as metrics data which are a nightmare to make compatible). https://wiki.mozilla.org/SVGOpenTypeFonts Regards, Khaled
Re: [OT] Flag coding (was: Re: Tags and future new technologies [...])
2012/6/2 Asmus Freytag asm...@ix.netcom.com: While those things might be nice, the fact that this whole infrastructure doesn't exist is the clearest indication that none of these are anywhere close to being ready for encoding as characters, let alone being considered in an encoding *standard*. They continue to be solutions in search of a problem. That's your opinion, most solutions already exist, for a problem that does not need to be searched... How could there be some existing solutions (though not interoperable), if there was no such problem? In that case I can retuen the argument about the existing language tags that were encoded without any need for including them, as they were designed clearly at the wrong level. The main problem to solve here is the interoperabiity of the various solutions adopted (and where this nightmare should find an end, preserving the intended semantics) So I really won't support your argument, which I find in fact abusive and irrespectful.
[OT] Flag coding (was: Re: Tags and future new technologies [...])
Philippe Verdy wrote: If the first need is to represent current country flags simply (ignoring the dated versions), and the first level of subdivisions in those countries, then ISO 3166 already provides the basic codes (we just need the convention that any codes that consists in two letters, or start by two letters, and hyphen must obey to ISO 3166-1 or ISO 3166-2. Further extensions will wait the development of a more complete registry, which will allow defining codes using other prefixes acting like namespaces. For flags belonging to nations and subnational entities, of course one would expect a flags code to use widely recognized standards, starting with ISO 3166. For my four examples, it might have: 1. the United States → US 2. the state of Colorado → US-CO 3. Adams County, Colorado → US-CO-001 (using FIPS 6-4; although that standard has been withdrawn, I can’t find what replaced it; other standards would be needed for second-level subdivisions of other countries) 4. the city of Thornton → US-THT (using UN/LOCODE) There are other possibilities. But this only tells part of the story; one would probably want the flags code to cover current or historical entities without standard code elements, such as the Holy Roman Empire or NATO, or other types of domains, such as maritime and military and auto racing and the Olympic Games and classical pirates (and maybe modern ones too). There would have to be a coding mechanism for this—not necessarily all the code elements, not right away, but a way to expand to include them. I think this is getting off-topic for Unicode, though I know Philippe thinks of it as the basis for a great addition to Unicode. -- Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA http://www.ewellic.org | @DougEwell
