Consider the recent example offered by Frank da Cruz,
which uses the superscript "i".
> Thus "Þe" ("The") might be written "Yⁱ".
(If you have "au_courant.ttf" installed and can actually display it.)
In HTML, that might be written as "Y<superscript>i</superscript>"
That's mark-up.
If someone were to assign PUA code for this, say U+E6D1 for <superscript>
and U+E6D2 for </superscript>, then the sequence could be just as easily
written with PUA-code-points-as-mark-up.
There should be nothing wrong with using PUA code points as mark-up,
the PUA is for private use and anyone can make any use of those code
points. Exchanging information depends upon an agreement between
the sender and the recipient, whether the information is ASCII, Unicode,
Eutocode, Big5, HTML, PUA mixed with straight Unicode, or some
proprietary font encoding.
Private use doesn't imply that people can't exchange data encoding
PUA material. Private use just means that the Standard will never
assign characters to values in the PUA ranges. Period.
What private use does imply, though, is that material using anything
in those ranges is not Unicode material. Even if Unicode and PUA are
mixed together.
If HTML can use ASCII as mark-up, private individuals can certainly
agree to use PUA code points as mark-up. (It's all just ones and
zeroes.) Whether or not such an approach is viable is debatable.
What isn't debatable is that such use would certainly not be illegal,
it just wouldn't be Unicode.
And, since it isn't Unicode, it's considered a bit off-topic for this
list.
Perhaps "Private Use Area" is a misnomer, and "Open Use Area"
would be more appropriate?
Best regards,
James Kass.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tex Texin" <tex@i18nguy.com>
To: "William Overington" <WOverington@ngo.globalnet.co.uk>
Cc: "Stefan Persson" <alsjebegrijptwatikbedoel@yahoo.se>; "Andrew C. West" <andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu>;
<unicode@unicode.org>; <archive@ngo.globalnet.co.uk>
Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2002 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: Tildes on vowels
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Sat Aug 10 2002 - 19:35:47 EDT