From: Rick McGowan (rick@unicode.org)
Date: Fri Oct 17 2003 - 08:56:32 CST
Jill Ramonsky wrote...
> It seems to me that if 0x110000 codepoints isn't a big enough space to fit in
> the Klingon alphabet (and other alphabets which were similarly rejected)
> then we need more codepoints. Simple as that.
Rejection of Klingon has *absolutely* nothing to do with space. Jill
quoted, but apparently did not *read* a statement (ostensibly from KLI but
apparently only existing in a FAQ from a mail list not on the kli.org
site). Let me quote again, the relevant point:
> Klingon was rejected, but it failed because its potential users don't use it.
Jill went on to write:
Answer the question "please come up with more than 1 million things that
need to be encoded?" by saying:
> Every script that ever got rejected by the Unicode Consortium.
Count the rejected characters, please. The number is nowhere near a
million. *SPACE* is simply not the issue in rejection. It has to do with
usage.
> In such a system no application need ever be rejected, for any reason.
> Inclusion would be automatic for every submission.
Who will write software to keep track of all that? Sorry, but that notion
is economically preposterous. If anyone anytime can make a new character
and have it automatically added to the standard, you don't have a very
stable standard, you have a bunch of competing private uses, and nobody
from one moment to the next has any idea what is actually in the standard
or how it relates to anything else. (The notion is anti-communicative and
entirely against the trend of history which, in all civilizations I know of
in all time periods has tended toward greater standardization, not less.)
The chaos of such a free-for-all would probably end up working itself out
into a series of private agreements among user groups and industry
cartels... Soon someone would get the bright idea of defining a
circumscribed subset so more people could have some hope of communicating.
And then we would be right back in Unicode land.
And as usual this message reflects solely my personal opinion and not that
of anyone else.
Rick
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