I think there are different levels of Unicode compliance we need to
look at. In over 75% of the tests I am satisfied with simple
compliance, I don't even expect or assume that more complex issues have
been implemented or thoroughly tested.
Test 1: A stream of Unicode data gets sent into the system, flows
through a sequence of components, gets stored, gets retrieved, and
comes back out of the system. Is the data still the same?
The following tests are concerned with the different functionality of
the components, tested one at a time, then combined till full
functionality testing has been achieved, as if non-Unicode data had
been used. (This is assuming Unicode-enablement is the objective.)
This is the level of compliance I am most interested in. The component
can handle Unicode data the same as it can handle legacy encodings. The
vanilla test.
After that we can add the chocolate sauce, the cherry, and the
sprinkles of Unicode. The special Unicode compliance tests are harder
to define and to perform, I agree. But in most cases these issues
haven't even been implemented yet.
Dave
--- Tex Texin <tex@i18nguy.com> wrote:
> David,
>
> Why couldn't a checklist be established for each of the
> functionalities
> that you mention, which a product could score itself against for
> conformance, over a state range of supported characters?
>
> Recently, I did a search for a product, and it was difficult to know
> which scripts were supported and whether it had the Unicode
> capabilities
> I was concerned with. It would have been nice if there was a
> statement
> of self-compliance that indicated whether or not they supported:
>
> Character ranges-
> broken into reasonable subgroups:
> Preservation of unicode characters
> Combining characters:
> normalization forms:
> collations:
> etc.
>
> I think if there were such a checklist with suitable definitions
> and/or
> conformance requirements, vendors that had done the work to support
> Unicode properly would be glad to declare it in their product specs
> or
> packaging.
>
> And there are probably many product developers that think they
> support
> Unicode but in fact don't and such a checklist would help make them
> aware of what else they need to do.
>
> And if they misadvertised or reported incorrectly, I am sure their
> customers would be glad to inform them of their oversight thru their
> support lines or by announcement to the appropriate user group lists.
>
> Sure there will be some grey areas based on particular product
> functionality, but it would still be a far better situation then we
> have
> today...
> tex
>
=====
Dave Possin
Globalization Consultant
www.Welocalize.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/
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