Re: The Cent & Florin Signs VS. C-Slash & Left-Tailed F

From: Peter Constable (peter_constable@sil.org)
Date: Thu Jan 20 2000 - 09:54:01 EST


>Furthermore, a process could probably tell whether a capital F
       in French was a currency symbol by looking at the context and
       using a simple heuristic (e.g., "if the previous
       non-white-space character was a digit and the following
       character is not a letter, it's a currency sign; otherwise,
       it's a letter"). This would work equally well for U+0192.

       True, but I'm guessing that today probably most software treats
       U+0192 as only florin. When people decide to get serious about
       supporting IAI bilabial f (it will eventually happen), then
       they're going to have to add the special code to take care of
       this, and this code will take more work than would be required
       if they were dis-unified. At least, that's how it seems to me.

>> Options:
>>
>> 1) leave it as it is
>> 2) disunify; U+0192 used for IAI bilabial f, and new
       character
>> assigned for florin
>> 3) disunify; U+0192 used for florin, and leave
       semantics of
>> U+0192 as is
>> 4) disunify; U+0192 used for florin, but change
       semantics of
>> U+0192 to name = FLORIN SIGN, cat = Sc, bidi = Et

>You're forgetting option 5, which is how this situation has
       been dealt with in the past (consider the ASCII hyphen-minus
       character, for example). Leave U+0192 the way it is and add
       TWO new characters...

>This leaves U+0192 messed up, but it provides good
       alternatives to it, and all existing applications continue
       working.

       Thanks for completing the list (even though you don't favour
       that option).

       Peter



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