On Friday 1 June 2012, Asmus Freytag <[email protected]> wrote:
> All of these things remain solutions in search of a problem.
Well, my research would assist in providing communication through the language
barrier for such tasks as seeking information about relatives and friends after
a disaster.
Simulations have been produced for that and for seeking a meal with no
gluten-containing ingredients in it when in a foreign country.
Also for automated localization of signs in art galleries.
> The interesting thing I note is the level of enthusiasm with which these are
> discussed here, when, at the same time, a lowly single character currency
> symbol, with no special meta-coding, layout support, algorithm changes, etc.
> was so roundly dismissed - despite all the evidence that not supporting it in
> face of user demands would impact the ability of implementers to sell into a
> not insubstantial market.
Well, not by me. I supported the encoding of the Indian Rupee Symbol to be
promptly done so that it was ready to be used within the six-month time scale
that was set for introducing the symbol into use.
> Sometimes I wonder what's going on ...
Indeed. There are possibilities for great progress to be made with what can be
done using a stream of plain text characters and yet the rules for encoding
seem to prevent them even being considered.
There is a paradox in that, at present, in order for a new electronic
character-based communication technology to become introduced into regular
Unicode that evidence of its existing widespread use in a Private Use Area
context is needed: yet producing that existing widespread use in a Private Use
Area context is both unrealistic because it would be a Private Use Area
implementation and also that very supposed Private Use Area implementation
would damage the implementation and use of a regular Unicode solution for many
years.
The point is that such new technologies need to be introduced in a process that
is managed by Unicode and ISO Committees. For Unicode, the code points could be
encoded by the Unicode Technical Committee yet the individual encodings using
those code points could be carried out by another Unicode Committee, which
particular committee being a matter to be decided.
William Overington
2 June 2012
