From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Wed Nov 05 2003 - 19:21:35 EST
On 05/11/2003 15:13, Peter Constable wrote:
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]
>>
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>On
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>>Behalf Of Peter Kirk
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>>But I am not sure that this get-out clause should
>>be applicable to a process which claims as its very essence "to
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>support
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>>correct positioning of nonspacing marks" but actually supports only a
>>particular arbitrary (non even canonical) order.
>>
>>I would like to see this clause tightened up to say that a process
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>which
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>>claims to interpret properly a particular sequence of marks must
>>interpret all canonically equivalent variants of that sequence
>>identically, with the exception of special modes to show the
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>underlying
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>>character sequence.
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>That can't happen unless Unicode gives some definition to "claims to
>interpret properly a particular sequence of marks", and that is not
>likely to happen any decade soon.
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>...
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>Conformance does not obligate a process to interpret any coded character
>representation, no matter what other coded character representations it
>may interpret.
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It seems to me that the Unicode conformance clauses are so weak as to be
almost useless. An application can claim to conform to Unicode but
hardly do anything. A font can be sold, for example, as a Unicode Hebrew
font while successfully rendering only a very small part of the Hebrew
script. I would like to see a stronger set of conformance requirements
etc, so that for example an application, or a rendering system, can make
a claim to support Unicode version N for script X if and only is it
properly processes, renders etc all characters defined for script X in
version N according to the semantics defined in version N, and allowing
for canonical equivalence. Well, that's a two minute summary of an idea
which needs further thought. But I hope the general point comes across.
Without this kind of conformance guarantee we are in for a period of
chaos, when everyone can claim to conform to Unicode but no one has any
obligation to deliver anything more than the very basics.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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