Re: Xiangqi Game Symbols (was Re: Proposal to add standardized variation sequences for chess notation)

[Andrew West via Unicode]

On 12 April 2017 at 15:58, Garth Wallace  wrote:
>
> So has that proposal been retracted now?

Once a proposal has been approved it cannot simply be retracted by the
submitter. On the SC2 side, the proposed characters have been subject
to ballot comments from national bodies, and no doubt they will be
discussed at the WG2 meeting in Hohhot later this year.

Andrew

Re: Xiangqi Game Symbols (was Re: Proposal to add standardized variation sequences for chess notation)

[Garth Wallace via Unicode]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 2:13 AM Andrew West  wrote:

> On 12 April 2017 at 05:12, Garth Wallace via Unicode
>  wrote:
> >
> > Later Xiangqi proposals by Andrew West focused on
> > the circled ideographs and did not pursue new diagram drawing characters,
> > and were eventually successful.
>
> My Xiangqi proposal
> (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16255-n4748-xiangqi.pdf) proposed a
> minimal set of logical game pieces for Xiangqi/Janggi, regardless of
> shape (circular or octagonal) or design (traditional characters,
> simplified characters, cursive characters, or pictures) which I
> consider a font design issue, and explicitly did not seek to encode
> circled ideographs. My proposal was rejected, and a different proposal
> by Michael Everson
> (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16270-n4766-xiangqi.pdf) to encode
> all circled ideographs and negative circled ideographs attested in
> Xiangqi game diagrams was accepted instead.
>

Ah, I misremembered, sorry.

>
> The accepted proposal for circled ideographs is a glyph encoding model
> not a character encoding model as for other game symbols (Chess,
> Dominos, Mahjong, Playing Cards, etc.), and in my opinion it is a very
> bad model for several reasons. It makes the interchange of Xiangqi
> game data and game diagrams problematic; it hinders normal text
> processing operations on Xiangqi game pieces (for example, to search
> for a red horse piece you have to search for three different
> characters); and in modern computer usage Xiangqi game pieces may not
> be represented as simple circled ideographs, but may be coloured
> designs showing characters or images. It is also very likely that
> vendors will want to produce emoji versions of Xiangqi pieces, and
> these could not reasonably be considered to be glyph variants of
> circled ideographs. There has been some negative feedback on the
> circled ideographs model on the internet, and I believe that Michael
> has now been convinced that this model is wrong, and should be
> replaced by a model using logical game pieces.
>
> Andrew


So has that proposal been retracted now?

>
>

Re: Xiangqi Game Symbols (was Re: Proposal to add standardized variation sequences for chess notation)

[Michael Everson via Unicode]

On 12 Apr 2017, at 10:13, Andrew West via Unicode  wrote:

> My Xiangqi proposal (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16255-n4748-xiangqi.pdf) 
> proposed a minimal set of logical game pieces for Xiangqi/Janggi, regardless 
> of shape (circular or octagonal) or design (traditional characters, 
> simplified characters, cursive characters, or pictures) which I consider a 
> font design issue, and explicitly did not seek to encode circled ideographs. 
> My proposal was rejected, and a different proposal by Michael Everson 
> (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16270-n4766-xiangqi.pdf) to encode all 
> circled ideographs and negative circled ideographs attested in Xiangqi game 
> diagrams was accepted instead.

Not quite. At the WG2 meeting it was proposed, I believe by experts from the 
US, to use circled ideographs to represent xiangqi characters. “In for a penny, 
in for a pound,” I thought, and so said that if we were to do that we’d have to 
encoded all the attested circled ideographs, because you can’t have a circled 士 
(58EB) and say that a circled 仕 (4ED5) is a valid glyph variant of it. Then I 
wrote that proposal so that we could have an actionable document with which to 
get characters on the ballot. 

> The accepted proposal for circled ideographs is a glyph encoding model not a 
> character encoding model as for other game symbols (Chess,
> Dominos, Mahjong, Playing Cards, etc.),

This is true. 

> and in my opinion it is a very bad model for several reasons. It makes the 
> interchange of Xiangqi game data and game diagrams problematic; it hinders 
> normal text processing operations on Xiangqi game pieces (for example, to 
> search for a red horse piece you have to search for three different 
> characters);

Yes, it does. It is important to remember that this use of symbols is a text 
usage.

> and in modern computer usage Xiangqi game pieces may not be represented as 
> simple circled ideographs, but may be coloured designs showing characters or 
> images.

Or black and white designs showing for instance an actual elephant rather than 
象 8C61.

> It is also very likely that vendors will want to produce emoji versions of 
> Xiangqi pieces,



> and these could not reasonably be considered to be glyph variants of circled 
> ideographs.

True.

> There has been some negative feedback on the circled ideographs model on the 
> internet, and I believe that Michael has now been convinced that this model 
> is wrong, and should be replaced by a model using logical game pieces.

I was convinced, and my proposal to rectify this were provided as Irish ballot 
comments to PDAM 1.2.

Michael Everson

Xiangqi Game Symbols (was Re: Proposal to add standardized variation sequences for chess notation)

[Andrew West via Unicode]

On 12 April 2017 at 05:12, Garth Wallace via Unicode
 wrote:
>
> Later Xiangqi proposals by Andrew West focused on
> the circled ideographs and did not pursue new diagram drawing characters,
> and were eventually successful.

My Xiangqi proposal
(http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16255-n4748-xiangqi.pdf) proposed a
minimal set of logical game pieces for Xiangqi/Janggi, regardless of
shape (circular or octagonal) or design (traditional characters,
simplified characters, cursive characters, or pictures) which I
consider a font design issue, and explicitly did not seek to encode
circled ideographs. My proposal was rejected, and a different proposal
by Michael Everson
(http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16270-n4766-xiangqi.pdf) to encode
all circled ideographs and negative circled ideographs attested in
Xiangqi game diagrams was accepted instead.

The accepted proposal for circled ideographs is a glyph encoding model
not a character encoding model as for other game symbols (Chess,
Dominos, Mahjong, Playing Cards, etc.), and in my opinion it is a very
bad model for several reasons. It makes the interchange of Xiangqi
game data and game diagrams problematic; it hinders normal text
processing operations on Xiangqi game pieces (for example, to search
for a red horse piece you have to search for three different
characters); and in modern computer usage Xiangqi game pieces may not
be represented as simple circled ideographs, but may be coloured
designs showing characters or images. It is also very likely that
vendors will want to produce emoji versions of Xiangqi pieces, and
these could not reasonably be considered to be glyph variants of
circled ideographs. There has been some negative feedback on the
circled ideographs model on the internet, and I believe that Michael
has now been convinced that this model is wrong, and should be
replaced by a model using logical game pieces.

Andrew