From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Tue Apr 06 2004 - 06:55:14 EDT
On 05/04/2004 17:07, Mike Ayers wrote:
>
> > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]On
> > Behalf Of Peter Kirk
> > Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 3:09 PM
>
> > Mike's nonsencical
> > statements that all legal texts are necessarily highly marked up.
>
> Now I'm certain that you are trolling. I made no such statement.
>
Well, no, but you did twice suggest that plain text would not be used
for legal documents. And by using "Unicode" and "e-mail" you clearly
implied that you were talking about cyberspace documents rather than
printed ones.
> I did, however, possibly miss a word. "plain text Unicode"
> should be "printed plain text Unicode", as the width of a space is
> basically meaningless in cyberspace, but I thought that to be self
> evident.
>
Far from self-evident. The amended form of your statement is meaningless
and self-contradictory, because Unicode is meaningful only in cyberspace
and not to printred documents. Also there was no hint that you were
referring to printed documents and a clear reference to e-mail. So of
course I took you to mean what made sense in the context.
The width of a space is not meaningless in cyberspace. The Unicode
standard specifies clearly several things about its width. That width
becomes something real only when the text is displayed on a screen or
printed. But something which is not yet realised is not thereby meaningless.
So, are you asking for "evidence that plain text is even being
considered for use" in PRINTED legal documents, rather than ones in
cyberspace? If that is what you want, I will send you a scan of a
letting contract for my house, which, although clearly computer
generated in 1997, uses plain text with a monospace font.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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