While I disagree with most of what you've said on this list, it is not an unreasonable proposal to change the default properties for some ranges of the private use blocks. I don't think that this would, in practice, really disturb any applications, because of #1 below.
I have, however, a few observations. 1. PUA properties, as is clear from Ken's excellent descriptions, are simply defaults. With the exception of normalization, no Unicode implementation is required to observe them. So even if this change is made, any conformant implementation is free to simply ignore it and just assign its own properties. This would not be a magic wand. 2. Unicode properties are not sufficient for rendering. With technologies such as Apples, all of the other work can be done in a font. With OpenType, most but not all can -- in particular, reordering has to be done by the application/OS. So complex scripts that require reordering still would not be interchangeable without private agreement. 3. Even excluding the normalization properties and other obvious inapplicable properties (such as name or age), there are some 50-odd possible character properties, many of them with multiple possible values: see http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/PropertyAliases.txt http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UCD.html#Properties http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/PropertyValueAliases.txt A concrete proposal would have to specify exactly which properties were relevant, and what the values are for the proposed ranges. (Clearly an even partition according to all the possible combinations would be completely impractical.) If the goal is rendering, this means looking at the possible combinations of properties that are relevant for rendering and proposing a division that makes sense. Mark __________________________________ http://www.macchiato.com â ààààààààààààààààààààà â ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Kirk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Rick McGowan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wed, 2004 Mar 31 16:24 Subject: Re: What is the principle? > On 31/03/2004 12:40, Rick McGowan wrote: > > >Peter Kirk wrote... > > > > > > > >>... I have a real requirement. The UTC has the power to meet my requirement, > >>and to do so rather simply. I am asking them to meet it. > >> > >> > > > >Actually, you are not asking UTC anything. You are discussing the PUA on a > >public-access mail list. There's a big difference. This *is* the place to > >discuss as you are doing, and a good place to formulate your positions for > >eventual submission of a proposal, if any. > > > > > > Thanks for the clarification. I was aware of the distinction, and was > using "am asking" loosely. I am undecided yet whether to make a formal > proposal. Ken seems to suggest that this would be a waste of time - > although I can see some advantages in obtaining a formal rejection. I > wonder if anyone else on the UTC or associated with it might give some > hope for such a proposal? > > > -- > Peter Kirk > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) > http://www.qaya.org/ > > >
