> Bill, > Michael is no programmer, hence he doesn't have first hand understanding why > programmers distiguish between character set mapping (normally requiring > look-up tables) and digit conversion (normally done by offset calculations). > > That said, there are enough programmers on the committees so that scattered > encoding of digits, while not prevented, is at least not the method of > choice. > > The problem with making this a policy is that some scripts may not have a > decimal place-value type number system (or such use is not documented) at > the time of their encoding. That means, a digit zero may not be known or > documented. > > However, a prudent encoding policy would be to leave a gap in that ca
On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 3:50 PM, Asmus Freytag <[email protected]> wrote: > > Bill, > Michael is no programmer, hence he doesn't have first hand understanding why > programmers distiguish between character set mapping (normally requiring > look-up tables) and digit conversion (normally done by offset calculations). > > That said, there are enough programmers on the committees so that scattered > encoding of digits, while not prevented, is at least not the method of > choice. > > The problem with making this a policy is that some scripts may not have a > decimal place-value type number system (or such use is not documented) at > the time of their encoding. That means, a digit zero may not be known or > documented. > > However, a prudent encoding policy would be to leave a gap in that case, > because there have been scripts for which use of a decimal place-value > system was later discovered. > > A. Yes, I agree. Most of the numerals work this way in spite of the lack of a policy, and imposing such a policy may not be appropriate. I just object to the notion that it would not be better if such a policy were followed.
