Re: Unicode 3.2: BETA files updated

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Fri Jan 25 2002 - 13:09:11 EST


At 06:29 AM 1/24/02 +0000, David Hopwood wrote:
>Kenneth Whistler wrote:
> > And StandardizedVariants.html has been updated again, with more
> > of the missing glyphs provided.
>
>I can't see any difference between plain U+2278 (either in the draft
>code chart or StandardizedVariants.html) and U+2278 with VS1.
>Is plain U+2278 supposed to have an oblique stroke?
>
>Same for U+2279.

The plain ones are supposed to have the oblique stroke in the *reference*
glyphs.
As with all mathematical glyph variations, *both* variations are acceptable in
common, unmarked situations.

>For U+2A9D, the tilde-like part of the glyph is reversed left-to-right
>relative to what it should be (compare U+2272 and U+2273, and look at
>the code chart for plain U+2A9D). This is more important than it sounds!

After the last update, I sent Rick a font for these variations that pays
attention to these details.

>Less importantly, U+2268 and U+2269 with VS1 should use the same style
>of glyph (i.e. opening angle) for the less than/greater than sign, as
>the other characters.

Where possible we've taken the variations from actual fonts, that means
that there may be such minor differences that are unrelated to the feature
called out in the description.

>The Mongolian descriptions say "second form", "third form", and "fourth form".
>Unless these are already defined somewhere, I suggest "variation one",
>"variation two", and "variation three" instead.

This list is being published as Amd 1:ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000 (2002), so
it's essentially frozen. The list of variants has been out as a UNU TR
for a long time now with these terms.

>Is "variant" or "variation" the preferred term? If "variant" is preferred,
>then why "VARIATION SELECTOR ONE", etc.? If not, why "StandardizedVariants"?

While "VARIATION SELECTOR" is the formal name of the character (and therefore
fixed), referring to the selected thing as a 'variation' sounds really
odd, that's why the more common term 'variant' is used all over the place.
Perhaps we ought to make them formally synonyms, somewhat like code point
and code location.

I think it's a subtle thing. Without context, *VARIANT SELECTOR could be
understood as a VARIANT of a SELECTOR. Equally, without context, referring
of the 'variation' of a character is less clear than saying 'variant'.

A./



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