At 13:27 +0900 2002-02-05, Gaspar Sinai wrote: >Just because some companies who have influence on Unicode >Consortium use some algorithm, like backing store and re-mapping, >it does not mean that this is the only way. And I don't even >think they do in cases when character conversion is necessary.
Backing store and remapping are fundamental principles of Unicode. They are implemented by people who want to implement the Unicode standard. >For me it is very imprtant what a naive user sees on the screen. For me, too. >Yudit does convert the input to view order and back. Text >direction and end of line is clearly indicated. [...] > >If the standard wants me to confuse the user, I would rather dump the >standard than comply. I haven't been able to follow how I, the user, am confused by the Unicode Standard. It sounds to me as though you want a "Show Invisibles" option to disassemble Hebrew or Arabic text and display them in LTR order without any ligation so that the user can see what is in the backing store. That's a valid thing to want to do, but it's a special case of rendering, which has little to do with the algorithm. >I wish there was another world character standard besides >Unicode and not only half-hearted attempts like bytext. >Talking about characters: I think bi-di should not be in >Unicode Standard because it is not a character. >It is an algorithm. Yes, it is. The Unicode Standard does not just encode characters. It also provides tools for implementation. >I feel sorry for interrupting in the "Let's praise and >celebrate Unicode" mood of this mailing list. We like Unicode. We work to make it better. Sometimes people come to us with problems that aren't problems, or raise issues that have been dealt with many times before. Sometimes people bring us real problems that need real solutions. We're an intelligent bunch, methinks, and we can tell the difference. Unicode may have warts, but it's a lot better than ISO 2022. -- Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com
