Most platforms display unknown printable characters as white rectangles with hex digits in them. In Doug's message, I saw a rectangle with 01F in the upper row, and 3F3 in the lower row. Moreover, on any platform when users see unknown characters, they search for a font, install it and are able to see in cleartext at least something they can make sense of. For a RIS or any other non-default-ignorable character on a non-vexillology-aware platform, a font with stylized letters would be sufficient to read the intent of the writer, and, as a free extra, to tell apart Liechtenstein and Haiti without squinting.
On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 9:38 PM, Ken Whistler <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 7/3/2015 9:14 PM, Leo Broukhis wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Doug Ewell <[email protected]> wrote: > > Leo Broukhis <leob at mailcom dot com> wrote: > > What I don't like about PRI #399 is its proposing to use default- > ignorable characters. On a non-vexillology-aware platform, I'd like > to see something informative, albeit not resembling a flag, but > indicative of the intention to display a flag, like RIS can be, as > opposed to nondescript white flags. > > But then a reader will have to look at the raw Unicode bytestream to > find out *which* specific flag was intended. > How convenient is that? > > > Ah, but on a "non-vexillology-aware platform", if it is just ignoring > all this vexatious trouble of mapping the tag sequences to identifiable > flag pictographs, you're just as likely that the fonts/renderers > involved won't do anything comprehensible with any new > non-default-ignorable metacharacter additions, either -- particularly as > they > would be Unicode 10.0+ additions to the standard. So the most > likely display would end up looking more like: ⚐ □ □ □ □ > > How convenient is that? > > --Ken > >
