Re: Greek chars encoded twice -- why?

From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Fri Feb 19 2010 - 11:06:19 CST

  • Next message: Christoph Päper: "Re: Greek chars encoded twice -- why?"

    On 02/19/2010 06:56 AM, Kent Karlsson wrote:
    >
    > Den 2010-02-19 12.19, skrev "vanisaac@boil.afraid.org"
    > <vanisaac@boil.afraid.org>:
    >
    >> Precomposed characters are currently discouraged from use,
    >
    > They are certainly not discouraged from use. Indeed, the preferred
    > normalisation form, NFC, will use precomposed characters as much as
    > possible (with a few exceptions...).
    >
    >> and I believe NFKD is the prefered normalization.
    >
    > NFKD is not at all a preferred normalisation. Indeed, it is only applicable
    > in certain contexts, like IDN.

    How could NFKx be the "preferred normalisation" in general?
    Compatibility equivalence by design throws away information, and
    information that is considered to be necessary for proper
    representation. Things like GREEK PI SYMBOL were added precisely
    because they were *not* used interchangeably with ordinary Greek PI by
    some users. ALEF SYMBOL can't be interchanged casually with HEBREW
    LETTER ALEF; one is LTR and the other is RTL. The entire MATHEMATICAL
    series of alphabets in plane 1 is just about all
    compatibility-equivalent to ASCII. Compatibility equivalence is there
    to show resemblances and relationships, but not interchangeability
    (except, as mentioned, in contexts where full expressiveness at the cost
    of confusability is not desired)

    ~mark



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