Re: String name and Character Name

From: Sinnathurai Srivas (sisrivas@blueyonder.co.uk)
Date: Tue Apr 12 2005 - 18:09:17 CST

  • Next message: Mark E. Shoulson: "Re: String name and Character Name"

    ISO?

    It is rather disturbing to learn that a body like ISO has no concern for nor
    respect for languages nor people. I do not understand how suppose to be an
    intelligent and professional body can sink so deep.

    It is not acceptable. ISO has to change. ISO can not say strings has no
    meaning. If it does it is a lie. String names were selected for their
    meaning. If it turned out to be an anti-meaning, an oppressive or
    suppressive meaning it then become responsibility of ISO to correct mistakes
    not hide and lie with the tag of intelligent professional body.

    Sinnathurai

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "John Hudson" <tiro@tiro.com>
    To: "Unicode Discussion" <unicode@unicode.org>
    Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 4:04 AM
    Subject: Re: String name and Character Name

    > Sinnathurai Srivas wrote:
    >
    >> On the question of character/string names, my simple question then would
    >> be "The name used has full of meaning. UC pretending that it has no
    >> meaning is not true. It was selected on the basis that some one told UC
    >> that this is the meaning of this item and use it. So the string name now
    >> has meaning. Weather one tells one or the other, trying to find loopholes
    >> to hide facts is not acceptable.
    >
    >> Strings were named with meaning. Strings must remain meaningfull. String
    >> names has no meaning is not true and not acceptable.
    >
    > The fact that names were originally assigned to be meaningful does not
    > mean that individual names remain 'full of meaning'. The Latvian letters
    > to which I referred earlier, which Unicode names identify as being 'WITH
    > CEDILLA', are again a good example: yes, these names were originally
    > assigned in the belief that they had a meaningful relationship to the
    > identity of these letters. As it turns out, they were misnamed, because
    > the mark below these letters is not a cedilla. As far as I'm concerned,
    > this means that these particular names are not meaningful, because they do
    > not accurately reflect the identity of the letters. This doesn't mean that
    > they were not intended to be meaningful, but I reckon meaningfulness in
    > terms of usefulness in describing reality. Since the name 'WITH CEDILLA'
    > does not describe the real identity of these letters, the name cannot be
    > said to be either useful or meaningful. The same is, regretably, true of
    > the Tamil aytham: the name assigned by Unicode is incorrect and hence
    > meaingless as an means of describing the actual identity of this
    > character.
    >
    > But whether the name is meaningful or not, it is not going to change
    > because it cannot be changed because of stability agreements between
    > Unicode, ISO and other organisations. If it could be changed, I don't
    > think you would find any opposition to changing it -- no one *wants* the
    > standard to include incorrect and meaningless things --, but it is a
    > practical impossibility. There are other things in the Unicode Standard
    > that some of use would dearly love to see changed -- things that are, in
    > practical terms, more important than character names because they affect
    > character ordering and other implementation issues --, but these are
    > covered by the same stability agreements as the names, and we have to
    > accept that they are not going to be changed.
    >
    > John Hudson
    >
    > --
    >
    > Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
    > Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com
    >
    > Currently reading:
    > A century of philosophy, by Hans Georg Gadamer
    > David Jones: artist and poet, ed. Paul Hills
    >
    >
    >



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 12 2005 - 18:10:09 CST