Re: CJK tags - Fish or cut bait

From: Michael Everson (everson@indigo.ie)
Date: Sat Jun 21 1997 - 06:00:55 EDT


Ar 16:39 -0700 1997-06-20, scríobh Unicode Discussion:
>
>This does seem both a simple and correct engineering solution to me.
>A Macintosh WorldScript compatibility problem for CJK can be addressed
>by 3 or 4 (?) Macintosh private use characters which retain the required
>information for roundtrip conversions in Eudora.

WorldScripts are indicated by ID number, i.e., certain resources falling
within a range of 512 different numbers = a certain script, depending on
what the range is. (As an aside, there aren't enough ranges defined, and
one is in effect limited to 512 fonts this way, but that's a minor gripe.
For Inuktitut I used Ethiopic script IDs.) For Simplified Chinese,
Traditional Chinese, and Japanese are all defined as different scripts. If
you wanted to have all three implemented you'd need (minimum) three
different fonts, as things are now.

>The right way to approach this in the Unicode Consortium (as an industry
>consortium, after all), is for Apple to bring in a clearly stated
>implementation requirement for these 3 or 4 (?) additional codes. John Jenkins
>has already proposed something of the sort in UTC, for just this problem.
>If Apple can then convince the rest of the industry, as represented in
>the Consortium, that the problem these corporate user-defined characters
>are addressing is widespread and common enough (and commensurate for each
>participant) to justify giving standard codes to them, then UTC would vote
>for them and work with WG2 to see they got into 10646.

It would also be nice if WG2 and UTC talked jointly about it aforehand.
There are some Apple supporters in WG2.

>If the UTC accepts a low-impact means of conveying tagging in plain text
>(such as the Plane 14 proposal), that will probably meet the ACAP
>stated requirements for language (or other) tagging.

Such tagging is sort of what WorldScript does -- but it's defined by the ID
of the font being used to type at the moment. So somewhere (I guess within
Eudora) there would be a table relating the font ID to a language.

--
Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta
15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire (Ireland)
Gutháin:  +353 1 478-2597, +353 1 283-9396
http://www.indigo.ie/egt
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn; Baile an Bhóthair; Co. Átha Cliath; Éire



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