From: William Overington (WOverington@ngo.globalnet.co.uk)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 07:24:44 EDT
Peter Constable wrote as follows.
> .... the name is simply a unique identifier within the std.
Well, the Standard is the authority for what is the meaning of the symbol
when found in a file of plain text. So if the symbol is in a plain text
file before or after the name of a person then the Standard implies a
meaning to the plain text file.
> A name may be somewhat indicative of it's function, but is not necessarily
so.
Well, that could ultimately be an issue before the courts in a libel case if
someone publishes a text with a symbol next to someone's name. A key issue
might well be as to what is the defined meaning of the symbol in the
Standard. Certainly, the issue of what a reasonable person seeing that
symbol next to someone's name might conclude is being published about the
person might well also be important, even if that meaning is not in the
Standard.
> You could call it WHEELCHAIR SYMBOL, but that engineering of the standard
is not also social engineering, and people may still use it to label
individuals in a way that may be violating human rights -- we cannot stop
that. No matter what we call it, end users are not very likely going to be
aware of the name in the standard; they're just going to look for the shape,
and if they find it, they'll use it for whatever purpose they chose to.
Certainly. Yet a plain text interchangeable file would not have the meaning
built into it by the Standard. I agree though that there may well still be
great problems.
William Overington
26 June 2003
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