On 05/11/2003 15:13, Peter Constable wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On
Behalf Of Peter Kirk
But I am not sure that this get-out clause should
be applicable to a process which claims as its very essence "to
support
correct positioning of nonspacing marks" but actually supports only a
particular arbitrary (non even canonical) order.
I would like to see this clause tightened up to say that a process
which
claims to interpret properly a particular sequence of marks must
interpret all canonically equivalent variants of that sequence
identically, with the exception of special modes to show the
underlying
character sequence.
That can't happen unless Unicode gives some definition to "claims to
interpret properly a particular sequence of marks", and that is not
likely to happen any decade soon.
...
Conformance does not obligate a process to interpret any coded character
representation, no matter what other coded character representations it
may interpret.
It seems to me that the Unicode conformance clauses are so weak as to be
almost useless. An application can claim to conform to Unicode but
hardly do anything. A font can be sold, for example, as a Unicode Hebrew
font while successfully rendering only a very small part of the Hebrew
script. I would like to see a stronger set of conformance requirements
etc, so that for example an application, or a rendering system, can make
a claim to support Unicode version N for script X if and only is it
properly processes, renders etc all characters defined for script X in
version N according to the semantics defined in version N, and allowing
for canonical equivalence. Well, that's a two minute summary of an idea
which needs further thought. But I hope the general point comes across.
Without this kind of conformance guarantee we are in for a period of
chaos, when everyone can claim to conform to Unicode but no one has any
obligation to deliver anything more than the very basics.
--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
