...Presumably the same principles can be applied when you run into a newly discovered (probably archaic) cuneiform character. Except that for some reason, Ken, you classified "dynamic cuneiform" as Type VI: Glyph Description Language. Why can't it be seen as Type V: Ideographic Character Description, encoded with "pseudo-operator-like" symbols (Dean proposed just 14 of them)? That would provide a solution for newly discovered cuneiform as well as for newly discovered Han.
If you are representing Han data as Unicode plain text, and you run into a "newly discovered character", you are stuck. Your options are:
1. Use a "geta" (U+3013), i.e. throw up your hands and punt.
2. Use an Ideographic Description Sequence to get an approximate
description as a substitute.
3. Ask the character encoding committees to encode the character
(a process that will take a long while).
4. Ask the character encoding committees to make the character
representable by a designated variation sequence (a process
that also make take a long while, but which could shortcircuit
things considerably if the known lists of these things were
all processed ahead of time).
--Ken
I am not suggesting that this model should be used for common cuneiform characters any more than for common CJK characters; the static model, which was once agreed on, can stand. I am suggesting it only as a mechanism for describing newly discovered characters.
And then if a font designer chooses to provide a glyph and a mechanism for displaying it when the corresponding ideographic description sequence is encountered, whether in Han or in cuneiform, presumably that is permitted. Ken, you wrote
- but your wording implies that a renderer may do so if it wishes, although with current technology more or less the only way it can do so is to substitute a predefined glyph.There is no requirement for a conformant Unicode renderer to actually attempt a rendering of the Han character so described.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
