Ar 13:51 -0700 1999-08-17, scríobh Rick McGowan:
>Or is there some magic way of preventing unwanted things from being
>registered (and used) over good objections?
Sometimes the objections aren't very good. Please refer to CYRILLIC LETTER
KU. This letter appears in an ISO TC46 standard, whose registration in the
ISO-IR has been hung up by L2 because the sponsors followed the rules and
tried to do informative mappings to the UCS. Now fools like me are revising
2375 because we think it _is_ important that UCS mappings for all the crap
in the ISO-IR exist (where there are valid mappings).
Note that fools like me see this a way of obsoleting the ISO-IR and
migrating to the UCS. But it's not going to happen by pretending that the
ISO-IR doesn't exist, or wishing that it doesn't exist.
Organizations like EGT and SIL and a host of individuals create 8-bit
character sets all the time, to meet real needs in real time for real
people who speak lesser-used languages and need to represent and
interchange data. Industry has not yet provided a Mac OS with Unicode
support, a version of Fontographer that does all the magic smart-font stuff
etc. etc. etc. Whatever you folks have on Windows NT, well, I hope it works
for you apart from the rest of the over-ticked plumbing. I couldn't say.
But in the real world if the Kildin Sámi or the Inuit need an 8-bit code
table and implementation, those of us who serve these communities will make
such tables. And this means that when UCS support becomes possible for
these communities, we will expect our character sets to be handled
seriously for interchange and migration to the UCS.
The US has for the last 2 years voted against any new 8-bit character sets.
What a slap in the face of the minority communities who need them.
-- Michael Everson * Everson Gunn Teoranta * http://www.indigo.ie/egt 15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire/Ireland Guthán: +353 1 478 2597 ** Facsa: +353 1 478 2597 (by arrangement) 27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn; Baile an Bhóthair; Co. Átha Cliath; Éire
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