RE: numeric properties of Nl characters in the UCD

From: D. Starner (shalesller@writeme.com)
Date: Wed Nov 26 2003 - 10:27:15 EST

  • Next message: Peter Kirk: "Re: Definitions"

    > The cost of such exceptions is that an application cannot reliably use the
    > general categories to detect, evaluate or create numbers in a relevant
    > script. So this requires a separate table for each supported script.

    It's not a generally solvable problem. What's "C"? In the Latin script, that
    could be 12 or 100. Most of the Gothic characters can be used as numbers,
    so there's no way for a program to automatically figure out a value. In
    most cases, unless it's a decimal system with different glyphs (which arguably
    is only a font shift, even if it's easier handled as not), the program is not
    going to be able to handle it without special code -- and Gothic doesn't use
    a decimal system.

    And let's be honest - every word written in Gothic, ever, fits on 68 pages of paper
    (small font, and both sides, but still.) (This isn't counting the grocery lists of
    Tolkein and Ewell, of course. But they are the exception.) Even most of the reprints
    of those 68 pages are in the Latin script. In the real world, the number of people
    put out by the fact that a program can't detect, evaluate or create numbers in Gothic
    is about, um, zero.

    -- 
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