On 08/01/2002 11:38:39 AM Martin Kochanski wrote:
>Google led me to the UTC 84 / L2 181 Minutes, where Motion 84-M6 says of >not-a-characters: [snip] >But - given that it would require a positive effort from a programmer to >implement any of these restrictions, I think we're pretty safe in assuming that >none of it will be enforced in practice, and so using U+FDD0 in online help or >web pages ought to be safe. In any case, it wouldn't be catastrophic if things >changed one day. These are VERY unsafe assumptions. You're thinking that these are codes a programmer some day needs to more or less disable in their code. Quite the opposite, these are codes that a programmer is specifically allowed to turn on to mean ANYTHING their little heart desires. They might define one of them to mean BEGIN DELETION and another to mean END DELETION. If you happen to stick an instance of the former into your data, I doubt you'll be happy with the results. >It also means that I don't have to write any proposals or make committee >meetings longer than they already are! What do you think the meetings are for? Proposals aren't last resort things to be avoided. Quite the opposite. They are the first step in pursuing a convention that everyone agrees to, which is the only way you can count on your special character working in someone else's software. And co-opting not-a-characters that were made such for particular reasons and using them for completely different reasons, and in particular doing the very things the standard says not to do, viz. - they are not to be publicly transmitted is a sure way to create problems for you, and perhaps for others. Using one of these is probably the worst decision you could make. >[Unless Asmus Freytag, who proposed motion 84-M7 that made FDD0-FDEF >not-a-characters has anything to add about the safety of using one of these >characters in this way?] The safety of using these has nothing to do with Asmus in particular. You've been warned! - Peter --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Constable Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA Tel: +1 972 708 7485 E-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
