At 10:47 AM 10/21/97 -0700, odonnell@zk3.dec.com wrote:
>. . .
>>>Question: does position 20A0 for the ECU or EURO ?
>
>>Neither. It's for "an undefined, future pan-European currency." When
>>the Euro comes into existence, it won't be "undefined," and it won't be
>>"future," hence U+20A0 isn't appropriate to use for it.
>. . .
>
>
>It seems strange to reserve something undefined for future
>use, but then not use it because the now-present, defined
>item isn't "undefined" or "future" anymore. How could you
>ever use this slot?
>
John may not have stated correctly the reasoning of the UTC.
The Consortium's position, after explicitly exploring positions such
as the ones stated in many e-mails recently, is that the character
at 20A0 is an exisitng character. The character has existed in
Unicode since Unicode 1.0. It is implemented with the glyph of a linked
C and E in many fonts. People may have been using it in their data.
It exists as well in the Xerox character set (which maps to Unicode).
It is immaterial whether the currency that it tries to depict exists or not,
it is definitely not the same character as 20AC Euro Sign.
Unicode has made, and will make in the future, corrections to glyphs
shown in the standard, whenever that is warranted. Glyph shapes are not
normative, but they serve to indicate the identity of the character.
Therefore a correction must preserve this identity, a change from a linked
C and E (with uncertain provenance and usage) to a double stroke
rounded E with precise meaning required a new definition.
Incidentally, it is worth reminiding people on this list, that character names,
once given, are irrevocable. Aliaes and notes can and will be used to
guide the user past historical mistakes in the process.
A./
Asmus Freytag
Vice President
The Unicode Consortium
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:37 EDT