From: Peter Kirk (peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com)
Date: Sat Aug 09 2003 - 15:27:50 EDT
On 08/08/2003 17:27, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>Philippe continued:
>
>
>
>>On Saturday, August 09, 2003 12:49 AM, Michael Everson wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>At 14:22 -0700 2003-08-08, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Philippe, you are tilting at windmills, here. There is no chance
>>>>that the UTC is going to consider such a character, in my
>>>>assessment, let alone give it the properties you suggest.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Nor WG2 either.
>>>
>>>
>>Why that? Because I suggest something that some other may think
>>as useful to fill a large gap in Unicode for spcing diacritics, but I'm
>>not trusted enough due to my errors or confusions here, so that this
>>suggestion would be endorsed by more "serious" UTC or WG2
>>members?
>>
>>
>
>Mostly because there is no "large gap" here in the first place.
>
>
The gap may not be large, but Philippe, John H and I have identified a
real gap. Why this antagonism against filling it? Is it just because you
don't like the name Philippe suggested? I accept that there may be
rational arguments to be made that the gap is not significant enough for
Unicode to fill, but I have not seen any such rational arguments, just
"over my dead body" type irrational responses.
>
>
>>Why do you think it is stupid to have a single carrier character that
>>would avoid adding new spacing diacritics, when the standard
>>combining diacritics could be used without less "quirks" like
>>"defective" sequences just to produce the desired effect?
>>
>>
>
>Because the mechanism for doing so -- application to SPACE or
>to NBSP -- has been specified by the standard for a decade now.
>
>
Understood. But John H has clearly spelled out several of the weaknesses
in this mechanism. And this is not something set in stone, there is I
think no mention of it in the stability document. So there is no a
priori reason not to define a new and improved mechanism, with the old
mechanism still supported but now discouraged.
>
>
>>If you think that spacing diacritics are stupid,
>>
>>
>
>We do not. Some of them are necessary compatibility characters.
>Others have distinct usage as spacing forms that warrant
>their separate encoding.
>
>
And what if it decided that others have "distinct usage as spacing
forms" which cannot be adequately represented by space or NBSP plus
diacritic? Of course we could propose more spacing diacritics, but
surely rather than define a potentially large number of new spacing
forms it would make sense to define one new character which can combine
with any diacritic to produce a spacing form.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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