Re: On the possibility of guidance code points for the Private Use Area

[Wm Se�n Glen]

Couldn't one just embed the glyphs that aren't specified by Unicode along with the text? Wm Se�n Glen From: William Overington Sent: Wednesday, 25 April, 2001 3:40 Subject: Re: On the possibility of guidance code points for the Private Use Area I wrote previously: I am not suggesting that a piece of software trying to read a plain unicode text document would need to look things up at a registry nor then access the internet.  Such a piece of software would just work using a local file. Peter Constable asked: How do you get that local file? How do you know where to get it, and merely the fact that your supposed to look for it? That's part of what's involved in your suggestion of a registry, and my real point is that at some point you and I have to have a prior agreement. I reply: The local file is the file of unicode plain text that the software is trying to read. The prior agreement that the original author of the file of unicode plain text needs to have with the person seeking to read that file of unicode plain text need not be between the two people directly. For example, in everyday use of the English language, if I write the word horse then you have a knowledge of what that word means, even though you and I as individuals have not agreed with each other what the word means.  That is because the word is a very well known part of the vocabulary of English. I feel that a simple method is needed so that if a file of plain unicode text is being processed by a computer and the file contains character codes from the private use area then there is a straighforward way for the computer system doing the processing to find out the meanings of those characters from the private use area that are being used using information contained within the file itself. There are, I suggest, essentially two broad classes of ways to achieve this result.  One class is of ways that are defined within the private use areas themselves, the other class is of ways that have some assistance from one or more codes that are not in the private use area. I have, thus far, suggested only a way that is entirely within the private use area itself.  Others have suggested the use of a private use area interpretation tag, which would require the Unicode Consortium to help solve the problem. I like the idea of the tags, I feel that that approach would be far more flexible than the system that I first suggested.  However, there have been various reasons given as to why the use of tags could be a problem. Accordingly I am now making a suggestion as to how to proceed and will start a derived thread to state it. William Overington 25 April 2001