Re: Unicode, Cure-all or Kill-all?

From: Jonathan Rosenne (100320.1303@CompuServe.COM)
Date: Tue Aug 13 1996 - 08:50:59 EDT


Martin Duerst wrote:
>Unicode distinguishes hyphen and minus (besides having a generic
>hyphen/minus), because in certain circumstances one might indeed
>want to distinguish them and show them differently, although these
>circumstances are rare and the distinction is definitely a burden on
>the general user.

I was under the impression that in regular handwriting or print hyphen and minus
look quite different. Only because of the severe limitations of 6 or 7 bit
computer codes were they "merged" into a novelty that looks like neither. The
same was done to the two English single quotes and the apostrophe.

With a 16 bit code the limitations and the necessity are gone.

Jonathan



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