RE: Indian new rupee sign

From: Jonathan Rosenne (jr@qsm.co.il)
Date: Fri Jul 30 2010 - 06:27:12 CDT

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Indian new rupee sign"

    Why does one require implementation laws to define a code point in Unicode for a new currency symbol? And what does it have to do with ISCII or keyboard layouts or usage or non-usage by people within India or abroad?

     

    One cannot make too many assumptions regarding usage. For example, Microsoft enforces the use if the Israeli currency symbol ₪ - by means of introducing it as a spelling correction for the common abbreviation ש"ח. In normal text many, including myself, do not want this but fortunately the solution was straightforward.

     

    Jony

     

    > -----Original Message-----

    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On

    > Behalf Of verdy_p

    > Sent: Friday, July 30, 2010 1:23 PM

    > To: Michael Everson; shi zhao

    > Cc: unicode@unicode.org

    > Subject: Re: Indian new rupee sign

    >

    > > De : "Michael Everson"

    > > I like the video clip there. "Encoding in Indian standards will take

    > about six months. Encoding in the Unicode and

    > IEC standards will take about 18 months to two years."

    > >

    > > Sounds as though our Government of India colleagues gave them good

    > advice.

    > >

    > > Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/

    >

    > Yes, and during that time, we'll get correct input from India, when it

    > will have defined its implementation laws,

    > and defined its national standard.

    >

    > The only emergency will come when using the symbol will be mandatory

    > for residents in India (but this won't happen

    > before India clearly defines its standard, and probably not before a

    > transition period), or for software makers

    > selling products in India.

    >

    > India will first need to realize that adapting the ISCII standard will

    > be tricky (there is no more any common byte

    > value available in its various 8-bit subtables, even if all of them

    > have empty positions, so the basic one-to-one

    > transliteration schemes assuming the same position for "equivalent"

    > letters, digits or punctuation will not work,

    > unless India abandons the positions reserved for C1 controls in the 8-

    > bit version, abandonning also the 7-bit

    > version of ISCII, to free the positions 0xA0 and 0xFF).

    >

    > Only one position in ISCII allows interoperable extension across the

    > various ISCII tables (the "EXT" code which was

    > reserved for Vedic extensions, but Unicode and ISO/10646 encoded them

    > directly in each script by overloading the

    > unused positions of the basic ISCII 1991 layout). But seriously, ISCII

    > is dying... it never reached an international

    > standard like ISO 8859 (it could have been, as its layout was

    > compatible with it), and most softwares are ignoring

    > it (possibly not in India though, and its market size is large enough

    > that ISCII could survive or could be revived

    > for longer time than we think).

    >

    > And there will be a need for a keyboard layout assignment (possibly

    > replacing the old assignment for the "Rs" key if

    > it exists, suggesting AltGr+R for the symbol, and modifying keyboard

    > drivers so that they will return the new code

    > point (if they are based on Unicode, otherwise return the ISCII bytes

    > sequence).

    >

    > This does not mean that we must not prepare the field, even if for now

    > fonts can just encode the symbol in a PUA, or

    > if various systems won't accept the proposed standard code point

    > assignment. There's no need to allocate the symbol

    > in the Devanagari block, because it will be shared by all the Indian

    > scripts and many others, this will be a generic

    > currency symbol for all scripts.

    >

    > But the proposed U+20B9 location will be perfect, independantly of the

    > allowed glyph variations for the

    > representative glyph (India can vote at UTC and WG2 for the

    > rpresentative glyph, its voice will be heard), it will

    > have no impact on variations occuring on fonts used outside India

    >

    > In fact it does not matter if it is not formally approved for the

    > coming Unicode 6.0 (if it's too late for the WG2

    > Agenda ?) as long as there's a commitment to not encode enything else

    > at this location (now or in the future), until

    > India terminates its own legislation and formally requests this

    > character

    >

    > India won't need to do that if the symbol will ONLY be used on official

    > Indian banknotes or on LEGALLY APPROVED

    > check forms emitted by Indian banks, or on government emissions like

    > postal and fiscal stamps, or fiscal billings,

    > and if there's no plan to force customers and sellers to display the

    > symbol for pricing and advertizing.

    >

    > And internationally, India cannot force the use of the symbol, even if

    > it's encoded, because other countries are

    > already using the "INR" code in their interchange.

    >

    > India can still choose to retain its exclusive copyright on the symbol

    > and protect it so that it will have a

    > mandatory glyph form and metrics according to governmental decisions

    > (authorization required for using it, so fonts

    > including it would be illegal as they would be illegally derived works

    > based on copyrighted work, and there will be

    > NO place for it in the UCS where it should then be rejected).

    >

    >

     



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