Kenneth Whistler <kenw@sybase.com> wrote:
> Doug commented:
>
>> Excluding the hex-byte characters (which almost nobody seems to
>> like), we're only talking about 256 characters, aren't we? I
>> guess I don't understand why the opposition is so vigorous.
>
> As *glyphs*, nobody cares. They're fine. Anybody who wants to use
> glyphs like these to represent hex byte values may feel free to do
> so, and nobody will object.
>
> As *characters*, they are useless dreck.
...
Sorry, I guess my use of the word "excluding" was somehow misleading.
I did not mean to appear to be supporting addition of the hex bytes
into Unicode. I meant to say that, IF the hex bytes were removed
from the proposal, we would be left with a single 256-character block
(which is not even fully populated) and that I wouldn't have guessed
that its addition would have caused so much controversy.
I should also point out for the benefit of Michael, Rick, and others
that I nearly used the phrase "limited usefulness" instead of
"debatable usefulness," and in retrospect should have. I meant
"debatable" from the perspective of individual users, but "limited"
from the perspective of the committees. All character sets have at
least one character that SOMEBODY might think is not necessary, as
evidenced by the case of the gentleman who wanted to replace the
supposedly useless vertical bar in ASCII with the Euro symbol.
Cheers,
-Doug
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:42 EDT