DATE: 1998-12-01

L2/98-405

DOC TYPE:

Expert contribution

TITLE:

Proposal to encode additional mathematical and technical symbols in ISO/IEC 10646

SOURCE:

Barbara Beeton and Patrick Ion

PROJECT:

 

STATUS:

Proposal

ACTION ID:

FYI

DUE DATE:

--

DISTRIBUTION:

Worldwide

MEDIUM:

Paper

NO. OF PAGES:

32

A. Administrative

1. Title

Proposal to encode additional mathematical and technical symbols in ISO/IEC 10646

2. Requester's name

Barbara Beeton and Patrick Ion

3. Requester type

Expert request.

4. Submission date

1998-12-01

5. Requester’s reference

Scientific and Technical Information Exchange (STIX)

6a. Completion

Feedback from the Unicode Technical Committee is expected to require some adjustments.

6b. More information to be provided?

If requested

 

B. Technical -- General

1a. New script? Name?

No.

1b. Addition of characters to existing block? Name?

No.

2. Number of characters

575 + 157

3. Proposed category

?

4. Proposed level of implementation and rationale

Level 3, because of need for combining mechanisms and math variant tags.

5a. Character names included in proposal?

Yes for most characters

5b. Character names in accordance with guidelines?

Yes.

5c. Character shapes reviewable?

Yes.

6a. Who will provide computerized font?

To be determined (might be Microsoft)

6b. Font currently available?

Not a complete font

6c. Font format?

Type 1 (unless from Microsoft, in which case, TrueType)

7a. Are references (to other character sets, dictionaries, descriptive texts, etc.) provided?

Yes.

7b. Are published examples (such as samples from newspapers, magazines, or other sources) of use of proposed characters attached?

Not attached, but available.

8. Does the proposal address other aspects of character data processing?

No

 

C. Technical -- Justification

1. Contact with the user community?

Yes. Patrick Ion and Barbara Beeton.

2. Information on the user community?

Professional mathematicians, physicists, astronomers, engineers, and other scientific and technical researchers.

3a. The context of use for the proposed characters?

Used in publication of research mathematics and other hard sciences.

3b. Reference

 

4a. Proposed characters in current use?

Yes.

4b. Where?

Worldwide, by scientific and technical publishers.

5a. Characters should be encoded entirely in BMP?

Yes.

5b. Rationale

Accurate publication of mathematical and scientific research on the Web is impossible without a comprehensive and accurate collection of symbols in common use. Allocation in the BMP is in accordance with the Roadmap.

6. Should characters be kept in a continuous range?

Not required

7a. Can the characters be considered a presentation form of an existing character or character sequence?

No. This is not a natural language, and small differences in symbol shapes or styles are often critical to convey accurate meaning of the mathematical concepts being written about.

7b. Where?

 

7c. Reference

 

8a. Can any of the characters be considered to be similar (in appearance or function) to an existing character?

Possibly, if a sufficient mechanism is provided to make the necessary distinctions between apparently similar symbols which have different meanings defined in the context where used.

8b. Where?

 

8c. Reference

 

9a. Combining characters or use of composite sequences included?

No; it will be proposed in a separate document.

9b. List of composite sequences and their corresponding glyph images provided?

Sequences are not included, but glyph images of components are included.

10. Characters with any special properties such as control function, etc. included?

No.

 

D. SC2/WG2 Administrative

To be completed by SC2/WG2

1. Relevant SC 2/WG 2 document numbers:

 

2. Status (list of meeting number and corresponding action or disposition)

 

3. Additional contact to user communities, liaison organizations etc.

 

4. Assigned category and assigned priority/time frame

 

Other Comments