From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Fri Apr 29 2005 - 10:39:49 CST
At 15:17 +0300 2005/04/29, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> > An abstract character, as opposed to a character, is a formal concept
>> within the Unicode standard. This is fact mentioned in the
>> http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr17/
>> "The word abstract means that these objects are defined by convention."
>
>I've noticed that too, but it really puzzles me. On the other hand, the
>scope of the definition seems to be that document only.
That seems to be a problem with the current Unicode standrd, that
concpets are not globally defined in a comprehensive way.
>What is a character (generally, as opposite to abstract character)
>that is _not_ defined by convention? The very idea seems to postulate an
>ontology where concepts can exist independently of human life.
The principle (as I see it) is that there is an intuitive notion of a
"character", which varies with user and context. As that concept is
impossible to capture, in a technical document, one introduces a
formal notion, called "abstract character" then, which is intended to
approximate the intuitive notion(s) of a character, but which is
clearly a formalization that may also depart from it. This is then a
typical scientific approach.
>My gut feeling is that "abstract" is just an attribute that has been
>thrown in different contexts - undoubtedly in an attempt to clarify
>things, but often failing to do that.
So then again, it could be that Unicode does not have made these
things clear enough.
-- Hans Aberg
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