Re: String name and Character Name

From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Tue Apr 26 2005 - 19:07:02 CST

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    Peter Kirk wrote:

    > I did not misquote you. The nature of a quote is always to be selective.

    Unless one quotes in full.

    > The words I quoted from you were precisely words that you wrote. I
    > accept that you did write the additional words, whatever they might mean
    > - I understand "*dis*-recommend" as equivalent to "deprecate", although
    > perhaps informally.

    That seems to me a misunderstanding. I took Ken to mean, very simply, that the UTC neither
    recommends for nor recommends against the use of Unicode character names in user
    interfaces, which is hardly surprising since user interfaces fall well outside the mandate
    of the UTC.

    I don't work with user interfaces, but I certainly work with glyph names that need to be
    mapped back to characters by various routes (some direct, some indirect, some based on
    name-to-character-code mapping, some based on GID-to-character-code mapping). I don't look
    to the UTC to tell me what to do. I use my brain and figure out what is going to work best
    for my purposes (this, as it happens, is never the full Unicode character name, so I don't
    use those).

    I suspect that if user interface designers choose to present Unicode character names to
    users they do so simply because it is a no-brainer: the names are in the Unicode data
    files, and don't require the developer to do much work. If the names are not, in fact,
    ideal for such purposes, blame UI developers, not the UTC, who are perfectly justified in
    'sitting on the fence', as you put it. I'm sure they occupy a similar position with regard
    to the price of tea in China.

    John Hudson

    -- 
    Tiro Typeworks        www.tiro.com
    Vancouver, BC        tiro@tiro.com
    Currently reading:
    A century of philosophy, by Hans Georg Gadamer
    Q, by 'Luther Blissett'
    


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