Kenneth Whistler replied to my posting as follows.
>> An interesting point for consideration is as to whether the following
>> sequence is permitted in interchanged documents.
>>
>> U+FFF9 U+FFFC U+FFFA Temperature variation with time. U+FFFB
>>
>> That is, the annotated text is an object replacement character and the
>> annotation is a caption for a graphic.
>
>Yes, permitted.
Great. That may well be useful for free to the end user distance education
using telesoftware upon digital television channels. A .uof file (as in the
thread An idea for keeping U+FFFC usable. ) could be used with a Unicode
plain text file of some learning material over the broadcast link and a Java
program (also broadcast) could place the pictures with their captions in the
correct place in the text.
>As would also be:
>
>U+FFF9 U+FFFC U+FFFC U+FFFA U+FFF9 Temperature U+FFFA a measure of
>hotness, related to the U+FFF9 kinetic energy U+FFFA energy of motion
U+FFFB
>of molecules of a substance U+FFFB U+FFF9 variation U+FFFA rate of change
>U+FFFB with time U+FFFC . U+FFFB
>
>Where the first U+FFFC is associated with a URL with a realtime data feed,
>the second U+FFFC is a jar file for a 3-dimensional dynamic display
algorithm,
>and the third U+FFFC is a banner ad for Swatch watches.
>
Thank you for this example. I have analysed it thoroughly using Notepad by
going to a new line and indenting at each occurrence of U+FFF9 and going to
a new line and indenting at each occurrence of U+FFFA, and going to a new
line and placing each U+FFFB beneath the corresponding U+FFFA. For each
U+FFFC I went to a new line, and placed the U+FFFC beneath the most recent
U+FFF9 or U+FFFA character.
In addition, after each U+FFF. character, for "ordinary" text, I went to a
new line and indented so that the next "ordinary" text character was beneath
the U of the most recently entered U+FFF. character, except that after a
U+FFFB the indentation went back two indentation levels.
After each U+FFFC character, and on the same line, I added the details of
the object within parentheses.
This gave the following.
U+FFF9
U+FFFC (URL with a realtime data feed)
U+FFFC (jar file for a 3-dimensional dynamic display algorithm)
U+FFFA
U+FFF9
Temperature
U+FFFA
a measure of hotness, related to the
U+FFF9
kinetic energy
U+FFFA
energy of motion
U+FFFB
of molecules of a substance
U+FFFB
U+FFF9
variation
U+FFFA
rate of change
U+FFFB
with time
U+FFFC (banner ad for Swatch watches)
.
U+FFFB
This took me quite some time to figure out, and was indeed an interesting
challenge.
>> It seems to me that if that is indeed permissible that it could
potentially
>> be a useful facility.
I was referring to my original example, not to your example! :-)
>
>Permissible does not imply useful, however, in this case.
That's referring to your example when you refer to "this case" is it? :-)
It is
>unlikely that you are going to have access to software that would
>unscramble such layering in purported "plain" text, even if you
>had agreements with your receivers.
Hmm? Yet, it is not the example to which I referred. The example to which
I referred has not been commented upon as to its practical feasibility has
it?
However, is your example that difficult if someone set his or her mind to
it? Consider for example that the software which does the unscrambling were
to have its own internal list of annotation facilitating characters so that
it assigned, for each page of the final rendered text, the characters in the
list of annotation facilitating characters in order for each U+FFF9 U+FFFA
pairing wherever the U+FFF9 item to be annotated were other than just one or
more U+FFFC characters. The list of annotation facilitating characters
could be something like U+002A, U+2020, U+2021, U+2051, that is, asterisk,
dagger, double dagger, two asterisks aligned vertically. The annotation
facilitating character is then placed both after the annotated item and
before the annotation, wherever that may be on the page, such as in a
footnote. I am not suggesting that an algorithm for such is quickly
programmable, yet it does not seem on the face of it to be as unlikely to be
possible as your comment might perhaps seem to imply.
>That is what markup and rich text formats are for.
Well, maybe for your example, yet for my example a plain text file for the
main text together with a .uof file to state the name of the graphic file
would seem perfectly suitable.
Then there is this curious passage.
>Note that it is also *permissible* in Unicode to spell "permissible"
>as "purrmisuhbal". That doesn't mean that it would be a good idea
>to do so, but the standard does not preclude you from doing so.
>You could even write a rendering algorithm which would display the
>sequence of Unicode characters <p,u,r,r,m,i,s,u,h,b,a,l> with the glyphs
>{permissible} if you so choose.
>
>--Ken
>
Well, who is this "you", certainly not me! :-)
Thank you for your response, which has been very helpful.
William Overington
16 August 2002
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