Re: Display of Isolated Nonspacing Marks (was Re: Questions on ZWNBS...)

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Tue Aug 05 2003 - 20:13:42 EDT

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    Peter Kirk said:

    > From what Ken says, it sounds like it will be wrong from whenever
    > Unicode 4.0 is officially issued

    Actually Unicode 4.0 was officially issued on April 17, 2003.

    What we are waiting on now is for the publication of the text
    of the book to catch up to that fact. ;-)

    > because this paragraph has been
    > excised from that standard. But until then it seems to be correct, SPACE
    > is indeed "considered a format character".

    Nope. It is incorrect to try to mix and match between versions
    of the standard.

    In Unicode 3.0 this was an ambiguity in the meaning and usage
    of the term "format character", and for Unicode 3.0, we can
    all see how people who ran into section 4.5 of the standard
    could be a little confused about the status of SPACE.

    The actual intent of that offending paragraph was to attempt to
    explain the somewhat procrustean nature of the General Category
    classes, which may not do justice to the complicated behavior
    of some of the characters in Unicode, rather than to explain the
    status of SPACE in particular.

    > I was misled by Jim's
    > reference to the URL of the final draft (as clearly stamped on the first
    > page) of 4.0, but since in fact he was quoting from 3.0 what he says can
    > hardly be considered obsolete yet.

    Actually it can. And that would have been obvious to everyone if
    a preview version of Chapter 4 had also been posted.

    Once again, I appeal to people to stop trying to second-guess
    the text of the standard. The final pdf for the online version
    is in preparation even as I write this. The final final
    proofs for the book itself have already been produced by
    the printer -- all they need to do now is turn on the press
    and start the binder.

    If everyone would just go off for a week or two on their
    August vacation, like they should be, we could all come back
    about Labor Day and we wouldn't have to be having these
    discussions. ;-)

    --Ken



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