R. Palais wrote...
> Which seems to make Unicode a defender of the status quo. Inaction is
> as political as action. "We are holders of the standards
> for the technology for encoding symbols, and we won't admit new symbols
> until they are widely used..." not necessarily the intent, but possibly
> the impact - that evolution of symbolic communication will be hampered?
Hmmm. I almost want to say "gimme a break!"
This isn't a matter of political stances or hampering or censorship, it is
a matter of division of labor and project goals. It still appears that
some people aren't understanding who has what jobs and what the goals are.
It is a mathematician's job to do math, and that can involve inventing
whatever new symbols may be needed along the way. Fine.
It is our job as a standarizing organization to standardize what is IN USE
so that (as a goal) people can standard-ly communicate those symbols
internationally without ambiguity. It is _NOT_ our job, and never will be
our job, to invent new symbols or rally around new symbols that we think
are cool or useful in any particular branch of study and then promote their
use.
This is the same situation as having one person in town be the mural
painter and another be the news photographer. Is every news photographer
required to paint murals, too, or be otherwise accused of hampering
artistic evolution?
It is not that we "defend the status quo" or stand by some principled
inaction with regard to symbol invention, or have some grand political
stance against the invention of new symbols. We add symbols to the standard
all the time! That's our job: we collectively decide what symbols are used
widely enough to be worth encoding, and then add them to the standard.
What would be the point for us to add a faddish or other nouveau symbol
that tops the popularity charts this week, but which goes out of fashion
next week and for the next hundred years is never used and just becomes
another blob in the code charts and data tables for people to worry about?
Rick
