On 07/27/2002 01:23:21 AM Curtis Clark wrote:
>Addison Phillips [wM] wrote:
> > Obviously I'm not an expert in these linguistic areas (and hence
> > rarely comment on them), but it seems to me that the lack of other
> > mechanisms makes Unicode an attractive target for criticism in this
> > area.
>
>Certainly no Unicode-bashing was intended (I'm more of a Unicode
>evangelist). I guess I'm confused about the use of Unicode character
>properties. Are you saying that, even though Unicode defines U+0027 as
>punctuation, other, I could use it as a glottal stop and create a locale
>that would treat it as a letter (and still be "Unicode compliant",
>whatever that is?). And if that's the case, are the Unicode properties
>just guides? Could I develop an orthography where Yβяبձ⁋ would be a
>word, and there would be no consequences?
If you only need the writing system to be supported in systems that permit
user-defined locales, that allow those locales to include tailoring for
whatever behaviours that concern you (e.g. line-breaking) and are content
with the level of difficulty involved in doing this, then you can do
whatever you want in developing an orthography. On the other hand, if you
want the writing system to be robust in the sense of having a high
likelihood of being supportable on a wide (unforeseeable) variety of
systems, then I would be inclined to stick strictly with the character
properties defined by Unicode. Unicode has a very large inventory, so this
generally shouldn't be a problem.
- Peter
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable
Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>
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