On 08/13/2002 10:08:00 AM "William Overington" wrote: I've been ignoring the list for a few days, but come back to find that not much has changed.
>>2) Superscript, subscript, combining above, and other forms of >>identifying placement of characters, are better left to markup or other >>rendering systems and file formats (and not for a vehicle intended for >>plain text.) > >Why? This call for markup seems to be some deeply held belief that is >treated as if it is a law of nature. So, some people somewhere decided to >think in terms of layers, so, that is up to them: the fact of the matter is >that using individual Private Use Area characters for matters which are >otherwise performable by a sequence of characters starting with a < >character used to mean ENTER MARKUP BUBBLE rather than its specified meaning >in the Unicode standard is perfectly reasonable. While you make comments disparaging layers and markup, you don't seem to realise that your own solutions are actually equivalent. They simply replace the industry-standard and widely-adopted conventions of XML using multi-character sequences like <sup>...</sup> with single-character sequences using non-standard, *private*-use characters. Both solutions involve layers; both solutions use markup. The only differences are - one uses character sequences with start and end delimiters, while the other uses single characters with point-like effect (their scope is implicitly delimited) - one is a widely-adopted industry standard that has a large number of implementations, and the other is merely a proposal entertained by a few individuals. I'm sure someone has pointed this out already some while ago. >I am not knocking markup, I am simply saying that there is a choice of ways >to do things and that sometimes a direct Private Use Area encoding is a good >choice. You'd better not be knocking markup since you're simply introducing a different markup convention. Please recognise and acknowledge this. >then Stefan's suggested characters might be very useful, >particularly if they happen to be in a part of the Private Use Area not used >for anything else This sounds to me like complete nonsense! Everyone must assume that the *entire* PUA is used for something else by somebody. That's the rules of the PUA. Case in point: I have a use of the PUA that involves every single PUA codepoint, and it is entirely different from Stefan's suggested character and any other character you or anybody else on this list has ever (to my recollection) suggested for the PUA. It involves using PUA codepoints to stand for rational numbers in the sequence 0.5, 0.25, 0.125... 2^-125068. Name any PUA codepoint, and I can tell you what it represents in this private system of mine. (Valid use? Yes. Good use? Perhaps in some specific -- but as yet unidentified -- processing contexts, but generally, not really. Worth adopting by others? No.) Or perhaps you mean, "in a part of the PUA *I* haven't yet used." If you're meaning your own use of the PUA, then please say so, and don't speak in general terms that sound like there's one common use for the PUA. >That is true, yet I was not suggesting that. I am suggesting that within a >specialised area of activity, namely transcribing documents and sharing the >transcriptions with others who are aware of the technique being used, that >such a Private Use Area usage could be of value. That's valid. But the discussion of specific uses of the PUA for those purposes really should be addressed specifically to a group of people that have such a need and wish to use a common convention so that they can interchange data amongst themselves. >>In short, the proposals do not solve existing problems(1,2,3), conflict >>with the current architecture (4,5), have problems themselves (5) and so >>are not enticing. > >Well, perhaps this needs to be reconsidered in the light of the above >comments. Reconsidering, the proposals are valid within a *private* group of users needing such a solution and needing to interchange data amongst themselves. If you try to expand the target group of users beyond that, then it is not good for the reasons that were presented. So, both points of view are valid in relation to different contexts (one specific, the other more general) -- and only those contexts. >Indeed, in relation to the declared aims of this mailing list, I feel that >discussion of Private Use Area uses in this list is directly on-topic. The only problem is that when you talk about the PUA, you tend to express things in a way that makes it sound to others as though you mean for those proposed uses to apply to a wide group of users. Perhaps that's not what you intend, but I believe that's the way many perceive it. The very fact that you offer to the list to assign PUA characters and publish details when others suggest some idea for a private character contributes to this: such an offer isn't necessary since not everyone on this list is interested in any given suggested use of the PUA, and the offer sounds like a proposal that all of us here should share common conventions for PUA usage. And any suggestion involving widely-adopted semantics for PUA characters is a bad proposal. There's nothing wrong with the most imaginative, unusual, bizarre or impractical use of the PUA, just so long as it's *private*. Trying to suggest that there be widespread agreement on even one PUA character is not good, and if it's a control character, then I agree with a recent comment -- it's potentially quite dangerous. >When people raise personality issues, they >are just using power to get a win, without answering the underlying >questions which still continue to exist, even if their asking has been made >.... er, taboo! :-) No questions related to character encoding and processing is taboo on this list. - 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]>
