On 12 Apr 2017, at 10:13, Andrew West via Unicode <[email protected]> wrote:
> My Xiangqi proposal (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16255-n4748-xiangqi.pdf) > proposed a minimal set of logical game pieces for Xiangqi/Janggi, regardless > of shape (circular or octagonal) or design (traditional characters, > simplified characters, cursive characters, or pictures) which I consider a > font design issue, and explicitly did not seek to encode circled ideographs. > My proposal was rejected, and a different proposal by Michael Everson > (http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16270-n4766-xiangqi.pdf) to encode all > circled ideographs and negative circled ideographs attested in Xiangqi game > diagrams was accepted instead. Not quite. At the WG2 meeting it was proposed, I believe by experts from the US, to use circled ideographs to represent xiangqi characters. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” I thought, and so said that if we were to do that we’d have to encoded all the attested circled ideographs, because you can’t have a circled 士 (58EB) and say that a circled 仕 (4ED5) is a valid glyph variant of it. Then I wrote that proposal so that we could have an actionable document with which to get characters on the ballot. > The accepted proposal for circled ideographs is a glyph encoding model not a > character encoding model as for other game symbols (Chess, > Dominos, Mahjong, Playing Cards, etc.), This is true. > and in my opinion it is a very bad model for several reasons. It makes the > interchange of Xiangqi game data and game diagrams problematic; it hinders > normal text processing operations on Xiangqi game pieces (for example, to > search for a red horse piece you have to search for three different > characters); Yes, it does. It is important to remember that this use of symbols is a text usage. > and in modern computer usage Xiangqi game pieces may not be represented as > simple circled ideographs, but may be coloured designs showing characters or > images. Or black and white designs showing for instance an actual elephant rather than 象 8C61. > It is also very likely that vendors will want to produce emoji versions of > Xiangqi pieces, 🔮 > and these could not reasonably be considered to be glyph variants of circled > ideographs. True. > There has been some negative feedback on the circled ideographs model on the > internet, and I believe that Michael has now been convinced that this model > is wrong, and should be replaced by a model using logical game pieces. I was convinced, and my proposal to rectify this were provided as Irish ballot comments to PDAM 1.2. Michael Everson
