Philippe Verdy wrote:
Read http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3727.pdf . This mechanism
is part of Unicode, and adding another one such as Philippe's to
accomplish basically the same thing would be a form of duplicate
encoding.
First I have NEVER advocated using flags for identifying languages.
This is a common practie but something I strongly disapprove.
I don't think I said you advocated that. I had two points: (1) using
flags for languages is bad; (2) Philippe suggests a mechanism for
representing flags when Unicode already has one. I apologize if it was
hard to tell which point was which.
Next This is not "duplicate encoding". Given that there's no such
first encoding of national flags as characters.
But that's the primary use case for Regional Indicator Symbols.
Yes this may mean that some people will try to use those flags as
language indicators. But this will remain wrong. My intent is just to
allow encoding flags for what they are : flags. Nothing else, not even
with their intended territory coverage (even if we can admit their
semantics according to ISO 3166 territorial coverages).
OK, so you're saying that a rendering engine could display Regional
Indicator Symbols as something other than flags, whereas your mechanism
would be explicitly for flags only?
MY initent is JUST to solve both the political and legal/copyright
issues, but as well offer a clear path for interoperability at the
plain text level, without requiring embeddded images (not stable is
using URLs, legally restricted in terms of copright and political
issues.
We know that. The assumption is that users need, or want, to display
national flags in plain text. I'm not seeing how your approach solves
this problem in a way that the Regional Indicator Symbols don't, if you
are willing to limit the scope to national flags and not subnational,
organizational, sports, etc. as you imply below.
Also I certainly don't want to let the UTC introduce directly flags
for any specific regions. This would be another nightmare (just like
the current "ideographic" nightmare that was adopted early, just
because emergency needs, but without any research and development made
to help close this issue for the long term)
And if you want my opinion about the alternate proposal for "regional
indocators" I don't support them for exactly the same reason as
language indicators: their application scope also in an undetermined
and arbitrary length of texts.. Flags are definitely not duplicates of
regional indicators, their scope is limited to the occurence of the
flag itself, wihout any consequence on how to interpret the rest of
the text. My proposal is just "symbols", not "indicators" that I
strongly do not approve.
Regional Indicator Symbols have nothing to do with how to interpret the
rest of the test. You're thinking of language tags.
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA
http://www.ewellic.org | @DougEwell
