Re: Katakana Extended-A?

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Mon Dec 03 2007 - 15:16:25 CST

  • Next message: David Starner: "Re: vim and Arabic/Farsi support"

    > >Best to keep them in the same region as the other kana and bopomofo
    > >blocks, etc. 2FE0..2FEF is free if sixteen characters are sufficient.
    >
    > I considered this at first, but then chose AAE0..AAFF for two reasons:
    >
    > 1. there do appear to be more than sixteen characters to encode, and
    > 2. http://www.unicode.org/alloc/CurrentAllocation.html describes
    > 2FE0..2FEF as being in the "Symbols Area" rather than the "General
    > Scripts Area."

    There is nothing normative about these "areas", which are simply
    designations of convenience to help in planning future
    allocations. Note that 2C00..2DFF were once also part of the
    "Symbols Area", but got reprogrammed to make space for encoding
    Glagolitic, Coptic, Tifinagh, and extensions for Latin, Georgian,
    Cyrillic, and Ethiopic.

    However, it is known that there is another set of ideographic
    description symbols, separate from the GB set encoded in 2FF0..2FFF,
    so if the work to prepare a proposal for them ever gets completed,
    2FE0..2FEF would be the most felicitous location for them to
    be encoded.

    As Benjamin indicates, the set of possible Katakana extensions also
    appears to be more than 16 in number.

    My own suggestion would be to use the space after Yi Radicals,
    A4D0..A4FF, as a tentative location. But in any case, don't
    sweat the exact location. Both the UTC and WG2 will be involved
    in determining the actual encodings, should a proposal be
    approved, and it is difficult to predict all the factors that
    may be involved, or what might get approved for encoding before
    your proposal is processed.

    More important is to have a clean, well-documented proposal
    that anticipates questions regarding decomposed versus precomposed
    encoding for various combinations, and which is well-illustrated
    with source examples.

    --Ken



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Dec 03 2007 - 15:18:08 CST