From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu Jun 10 2004 - 14:50:17 CDT
At 12:08 PM 6/10/2004, Michael Everson wrote:
>At 11:53 -0700 2004-06-10, Asmus Freytag wrote:
>>>It was understood that the mathematical symbols were not to be used in
>>>language text.
>>
>>What was understood is that if you need a run of text in a script font
>>you wouldn't use these characters, but would use markup. But if you
>>needed an isolated, out of context shape, where the font style has
>>semantic meaning, you would use these characters. That's precisely the
>>case here.
>
>Not so.
That's a statement, not an argument. Nor does it address my contention that
the phonetic extensions (all of them) that are styled Latin characters are
in fact equivalent to mathematical usage in that in both cases you have a
letter form that carries specific semantics based on what otherwise would
be font style.
>>There's no need to have yet another clone.
>
>I disagree. Leave the math characters, please, to the math fonts. For
>instance, the flowery style we use now for the math block is waaaay to
>italic for harmonization with the use of the character in a phonetic context.
This is a glyphic argument that doesn't hold water. The font you use is
well within the range of 'script' fonts that can be used for mathematical
use. In fact our font is not even the best script font of that purpose.
There is nothing magically different about mathematical usage.
Mathematicians will be happy to use any of the existing phonetic letters if
and when the fancy strikes them. Now that Unicode is widespread I wouldn't
be surprised if there weren't any mathematicians already spelunking...
>I am also not very happy opening the door to splitting Latin characters
>off into Plane 1.
That's an argument of convenience. The BMP will be full at some point in
the very near future, and then there will be no choice. Opening the door
for a historic extension makes a more sense than for a commonly used modern
orthography.
>I will be perfectly happy to rename the character LATIN LETTER VOICED
>PALATOAVEOLAR CLICK. It doesn't have an upper case property anyway.
That's just hiding the issue.
>In any case -- and I think this is the precedent I am looking for -- this
>is a "script" capital Q in the same way that U+0261 is a script g. It is
>**not** unified with U+210A SCRIPT SMALL G.
It's not a precedent, since the use of the word 'script' has different
meaning in both cases. The early namers didn't have your benefit and
applied these labels haphazardly. Look no further than 2118 !! In at least
one case I suspect that a character named 'script' was actually intended
for an *italic* shape.
A./
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