Re: Encoding Personal Use Ideographs (was Re: Level of Unicode support required for various languages)

From: Ben Monroe (bendono@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Nov 01 2007 - 06:05:51 CST

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    (Apologies for accidentally sending this to the Unicore list.)

    On 11/1/07, James Kass <thunder-bird@earthlink.net> wrote:

    > Ben Monroe wrote,
    >
    > >No. My ID has U+9580 U+9F8D.
    > >As much as I have tried (and continue) to fix that, the character
    > ><U+2FF5 U+9580 U+9F8D> can not be entered into a computer so is
    > >rejected. The one official exception that I am aware of is for a
    > >registered seal, which may be handled manually and does not
    > >necessarily need to be computer processed. That is precisely why I
    > >asked if it would be sufficient.
    >
    > A registered seal might be viewed in the same light as
    > a registered logo.

    I would appreciate it if someone who knows for sure could give me a
    definite answer.

    > When you say that the character <U+2FF5 U+9580 U+9F8D> can not
    > be entered into a computer, do you mean because it does not
    > exist as a character,

    Of course it exists. I use it on a daily basis.
    If you mean as an encoded character in some character set, then no it
    does not exist.

    > or because U+2FF5 is not accepted by the ID issuers?

    I do not know whether their system is Unicode, JIS, or something else.
    At the time, the issue was not about IDS. It was about the single
    glyph that I am describing here as <U+2FF5 U+9580 U+9F8D>. I was told
    that there is no way to input it.

    > There must be other people facing the same lack of support.

    When I was in college, one of my roommates by the name of Saitō told
    me that he wrote the first character in a particular way that he could
    not input it in a computer. I do not remember the details anymore, but
    I suspect he was referring to the JIS character set. In any case, he
    would substitute a similar variant for it when entering it in a
    computer.

    Last year I registered for a national test.
    I hand wrote the application and send it in. When I got registration
    confirmation, my surname came back printed as a black square (probably
    U+25A0). Similarly, I am often forced to substitute <U+2FF5 U+9580
    U+9F8D> with U+9580 U+9F8D when entering it in a computer.

    I suspect it is similar to people with diacritics in their name.
    Depending on the environment, diacritics often need to be stripped.
    (Of course that is not a Unicode problem, but the issue is similar.)

    > >I tried PUA in the past.
    > >Most people could not be bothered to install the font.
    > >Also, many people are suspicious, for good reason, of attachments.
    > >It's more difficult than you may imagine to get strangers to install fonts.
    >
    > Users of constructed scripts don't have the advantage of a
    > Unicode Standard, yet manage to exchange data nicely using
    > conventions such as provided by the ConScript Unicode
    > Registry. If enough users lack computer support for
    > their personal characters, what would be wrong with setting
    > up some kind of PUA registry for personal characters?
    > (One drawback may be that, if the allowable set of I.D.
    > characters excludes ideographic description characters,
    > then the set may well exclude PUA characters, too.)

    The script is clearly Han, not a constructed script.
    In any case, I desire to use it whenever writing in Japanese, not just
    for a select limited audience. In the past, most people would not be
    bothered to install it.
    In which case, just using <U+2FF5 U+9580 U+9F8D> is the simplest. Even
    if someones environment does not render it as desired (likely), U+9580
    U+9F8D should still display.

    > (Which code point did you use?)

    I'm away from the computer with that font, so I'll have to check a little later.

    Ben Monroe



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