Peter_Constable@sil.org wrote:
>
> On 08/14/2002 12:45:22 AM Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>
> >But even at the time, as the record of the deliberations would
> >show, if we had a more perfect record, the proponents were clear
> >that the "interlinear annotation characters" were to solve an
> >internal anchor point representation problem.
>
> I recall at the UTC meeting in Jan 2000 (I think it was 2000) there was
> discussion of adding non-character code points for internal use by
> programmers, and I remember Tex suggesting that it might be better to
> identify the specific functions for which internal-use codepoints might be
> needed, as had been done in the case of things like the IA characters. In
> other words, at that time, it seems that they were understood by everyone
> present to be intended for internal use by programmers only.
Peter's made the point that "for internal use" was understood which is
fine.
Let me add, that my concern with internal-use code points not having
specific functions, is that we now live in a world where software
applications often use third party components (various drivers, shared
libraries, OCXs, DLLs, etc.) internally. Having internal-use code
points, which may not be treated with the "right" semantics by 3rd
parties that have been integrated with internally, is problematic. You
should be careful and avoid passing these internal-use code points to
third parties, but this greatly inhibits their use, or makes for an
awkward and not easily extensible architecture.
At the time (in the discussion), I don't think we had many examples of
what the uses would be, and it wan't clear that many were needed, since
the functionality could be arrived at with higher level protocols.
So to be clear, when internal-use code points are used, not only do they
need to be filtered from external exchanges, you need to be very clear
about your internal architecture and make sure you don't call a system
function or third party function that might mistreat the i-u. c. p or
worse barf at it.
(Anyway, I think that's what I was thinking at the time. I have trouble
remembering what I said yesterday much less the last millenia.)
tex
--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tex Texin cell: +1 781 789 1898 mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
Xen Master http://www.i18nGuy.com
XenCraft http://www.XenCraft.com
Making e-Business Work Around the World
-------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Aug 16 2002 - 03:27:31 EDT