> On 26 May 2016, at 20:07, Ken Whistler <[email protected]> wrote: > > Well, let's take an example. The entry in Blocks.txt for the Arabic > Presentation Forms-A block is: > > FB50..FDFF; Arabic Presentation Forms-A > > The entry for that block in PropertyValueAliases.txt is: > > blk; Arabic_PF_A ; Arabic_Presentation_Forms_A ; > Arabic_Presentation_Forms-A > > So then which would it be? Should Blocks.txt be changed to the long preferred > alias: > > FB50..FDFF; Arabic_Presentation_Forms_A > > or to the abbreviated preferred alias: > > FB50..FDFF; Arabic_PF_A > > which would be more consistent with the XML attribute and with most regex > usage?
This sounds like a strawman argument (?). The long preferred alias definitely seems more suitable for a ‘canonical’ name. > I suppose a proposal to the UTC to further modify the UCD handling of block > names > could change this situation. But I'm not convinced that we shouldn't just > leave > things as they stand -- for stability. And then live with the complications > required > for scripts or other parsing algorithms that actually need to deal with > Blocks.txt to > either parse out block ranges (its main function) or to get usable block names > (its subsidiary function). Perhaps the “Note:” in the commented header in `Blocks.txt` could be extended to point out that the ~~canonical block names~~, nay, ++preferred block aliases++ are listed in `PropertyValueAliases.txt`? That would’ve been enough to avoid the question that spawned this thread.
