From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Tue Mar 09 2010 - 19:17:50 CST
Karl Williamson asked:
> It appears that there is a high bar to getting an alias made for a
> character name. Why is that?
Why do you think that is the case?
Do you have a particular alias in mind for a particular
character?
If so, one of the barriers to getting specific things done
is spending too much time worrying about and talking about
general principles, instead of making the case for a
specific change.
But yes, it is generally difficult to get things changed
in the standard, because it is maintained by committees
(plural), and changes to the standard have to be presented
to and reach consensus in committees, before they are
implemented.
> It's very clear that the original name
> must be immutable, but why not add an alias when it's shown that the
> original was an unfortunate choice?
When *what* name was shown by *whom* in *what* documentation
to be "unfortunate"?
And in any case, one person's "unfortunate" might still be
somebody else's "appropriate". It isn't possible to know
without talking about specific cases.
Further, you need to understand that the maintaining committees
treat the character names as identifiers, primarily. As
long as the identification of the character is clear,
it may not matter that the official name is awkward or
not optimal in some other way. Neither is the Unicode
Standard intended as an encyclopedia of character names,
so there isn't really any obligation to go sticking in
aliases for characters unless they serve some particular
purpose related to the standard or its presentation.
--Ken
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