William Overington wrote on 07/15/2003 05:33:22 AM: > >William, CENELEC is an international standards body. Such bodies either > >create their own standards or use other international standards. They do > >not use PUA codepoints. > > Well, the fact of the matter is that Cenelec is trying to achieve a > consensus for the implementation of interactive television within the > European Union
And that does not require PUA codepoints; moreover, your response does not escape the fact I was pointing out that a standards body will not be publishing standards that make reference to PUA codepoints. > In view of the fact that the interactive television system (DVB-MHP, Digital > Video Broadcasting - Multimedia Home Platform http://www.mhp.org ) uses Java > and Java uses Unicode it is then a matter of deciding how to be able to > signal the symbols in a Unicode text stream. And they won't be standardizing on symbols encoded using PUA codepoints. > In view of the fact that the process of getting regular Unicode code points > for the symbols would take quite a time, and indeed that there is as yet no > agreement on which symbols to use, and that the implementation of > interactive television needs to proceed, it seems to me that putting forward > three specific Private Use Area code points for the symbols at this time is > helpful to the process. Then you obviously don't understand the process. > >Such things are *not* useful. They do not achieve consistency, not in the > >short term, and most certainly not in the long term. If consistency is > >needed, the standardization process is used to established standardized > >representations. > > Well, what is the alternative? The alternative to agreeing on a standard? None, but why would you need an alternative? > The code points are in the Private Use Area, > so the suggestion avoids the possibility of a non-conformant use of a > regular Unicode code point. That is hardly the concern. Standards are designed to be international agreements that foster international commerce; such IT standards are intended to be international agreements on data representation or processing protocols on which interoperable products can be developed. In order to ensure reliable interoperation, they will not build standards on anything that isn't standardized. PUA codepoint usage is not standardized, by definition. > For the long term, hopefully regular Unicode > code points will be achieved. In the short term, my suggesting of some > specific code points does not impede consistency and may possibly help to > achieve consistency. Wrong. There is no consistency if company A decides to follow one set of PUA character assignments while company B uses a different, incompatible set. As long as PUA codepoints are used, that is going to be at stake. > However, publishing Private Use Area code points as an interim solution is > an established process. I think I'm about to set up that "default-ignorable post" rule. > These symbols seem to be as valid as many of the symbols already in the > Miscellaneous Symbols section and as valid as those currently going through > the registration process. In view of the excellent .pdf files which have > appeared about those symbols which are presently going through the > registration process I am rather hoping that these symbols will at some > future time appear in such a .pdf file as part of the registration process. Your and our time would be much better spent if you were contributing to getting the set of symbols finalized and getting proposal documents prepared to have them added to ISO 10646 than by proposing PUA codepoints to members of this list. > >And might I also suggest that you create a Yahoo discussion group or MSN > >community for PUA use, and then carry on discussion of ways to use the PUA > >there rather than here? > > Reading the information into the Unicode mail list archive is a process of > great value to me, so that is the motivation for posting the information in > this mailing list. I'm suggesting that you take your PUA discussions elsewhere so that the information value from the Unicode mail list can be maintained for the rest of us. > I was not carrying on a discussion of ways to use the PUA. I was simply > making an announcement to the people on the list. There may well be people > on this list who are interested in interactive television and who are not > members of the Cenelec discussion forum Wouldn't you have a greater likelihood of reaching your target audience on a forum dedicated to interactive television? > and who might like to know of this > suggestion. Also, the symbols might well be used in hardcopy television > programme listing magazines, so it would be desirable to have them available > in fonts. Think about the workflow for such magazines and then tell me again you're not suggesting PUA codepoints for use in interchange. - Peter --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Constable Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA Tel: +1 972 708 7485
