Attn: Unicode Inc worker John H. Jenkins
C/o Magda Danish
Sr Administrative Director
Unicode Inc
<jenkins @ apple.com>,
<[email protected]>,
Neither Assam Government nor Assam Literary Society has asked Unicode
Inc to encode Assamese stuff.
Can you reply back with detailed information on what prompt Unicode
Inc to encode Assamese stuff as "Bengali"?
Thank you in advance for providing this information,
Tulasi
PS: Your email thread appended herewith as reference
From: John H. Jenkins <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: Glaring mistake in the code list for South Asian Script
To: Unicode Discussion List <[email protected]>
The Latin script covers alphabets for languages other than Latin.
The Arabic script covers alphabets for languages other than Arabic.
CJK Ideographs aren't ideographs.
U+FE18 PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL WHITE LENTICULAR BRAKCET isn't a
brakcet.
And so on.
I realize it is frustrating when Unicode and related standards show
apparent indifference to getting names absolutely right. The
practical reality is that Unicode's intention is to use names which
reflect standard or common English usage, not to be incontrovertibly
correct. Experts (or native speakers) may well use or prefer
different terminology. In some cases, such as Burmese, the
terminology involved can be controversial, often for political
reasons. Almost never is it true that *everybody* agrees on a name/
term.
Moreover, for stability reasons, Unicode names can well be frozen.
Even if everybody comes to agree that a given name is absolutely and
completely wrong, we can get stuck with it. There was a time when
Unicode was willing to change names, but that proved to be a very bad
idea.
The net result is that Unicode is loaded with misnomers. And yes,
this is unfortunate and often very embarrassing—but so long as Unicode
does its intended job and makes it possible for people to represent
texts written in the various languages it covers, it's something we
just have to live with.
See also <http://www.unicode.org/faq/basic_q.html#4>.
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Siôn ap-Rhisiart
John H. Jenkins
[email protected]
