From: Doug Ewell (doug@ewellic.org)
Date: Sat Jun 05 2010 - 11:26:27 CDT
"Luke-Jr" <luke at dashjr dot org> wrote:
> Why not allow proposals of this nature a "draft" status, and require
> popular use before allowing it to become "standard" or "permanent"?
What would be the effect of encoding characters as "draft"? Would they
be allocated space in the Unicode charts, described in the online book,
but simply marked as "draft" in the way some characters are marked as
"deprecated"? How would that be different from simply encoding any
characters anyone asks for on the public list?
The IETF distinguishes "draft standards" and "proposed standards" and
"full standards," and the result is that the entire computing industry
ignores the intended distinction and treats all of these as equivalent
to "standard."
> Since posting to the list, I have become aware of CSUR (ConScript
> Unicode Registry) which sub-standardizes the Private Use Area. It
> seems to be, in practice, used for draft/pre-standard characters which
> are later forced to be remapped when given a standard range. Obviously
> the remapping is far from ideal, but if that is the road to take,
> perhaps mentioning it in the proposed FAQ would be a good start.
CSUR is for invented scripts, so this does seem like a reasonable match.
CSUR is not necessarily for "draft/pre-standard characters which are
later... given a standard range." The great majority of characters in
CSUR will never be formally encoded in Unicode. Those which have a
demonstrated user base (which means more than just "one guy and his
children") may be considered for formal encoding at a later time. The
CSUR encoding may be taken into account to determine the level of
popular usage, and whether any encoding or rendering issues have been
encountered and resolved. It is not just an automatic stepping-stone to
formal encoding.
If it's just you and your kids, the Private Use Area sounds like the way
to go.
-- Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA | http://www.ewellic.org RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14 | ietf-languages @ http://is.gd/2kf0s
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