RE: Tags and future new technologies (from RE: Flag tags (was: Re: Unicode 6.2 to Support the Turkish Lira Sign))

From: Doug Ewell <doug_at_ewellic.org>
Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:53:05 -0700

Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote:

>> Just as a matter of terminology, the deprecated Plane 14 block is for
>> "tags" and not just for "language tags." The idea for such a block
>> did come from the proposal to support inline language tagging, and
>> the only defined type of tag is U+E0001 LANGUAGE TAG, but other tags
>> could have been introduced later for other purposes. By deprecating
>> the entire block and not just U+E0001, UTC essentially deprecated the
>> whole tag concept.
>
> Fine. But the Plane 14 was not deprecated at the same time as a whole.
>
> Anyway, given that I propose symbols, they are NOT tags. I haev no
> opinion however about which plane should be used to allocated them.
> The plane 14 is fine for me, like any other plane (except the BMP and
> the SIP), even if they are not tags.
>
> You seem to think that the whole plane is for tags. I don't think so.
> Only the **existing** blocks assigned in Plane 14 are deprecated.

No, I said the block was deprecated, not the plane. "The deprecated
Plane 14 block" meant "the deprecated block which is in Plane 14."
Indeed, there are 240 variation selectors in Plane 14 which are not
deprecated.

>> They are definitely not ligatures in the sense that any typographer,
>> sign painter, or reader would think of them.
>
> You're right, in terms of typography. But all the technologies used
> for producing the ligatures are perfectly usable here to give the
> desired effect, with the same usage policies : they will remain
> optional, even if they are desirable (and should be enabled by
> default, just like the LAM-ALEF ligature in the Arabic script).

I accept that the technology for making a font and rendering engine
perform this visual transformation is the same as that used to combine
letters into typographical ligatures. Font guys can look at it that way.
I think if Unicode does embark on something like this—not to say they
should—or to the extent they already have with the Regional Indicator
Symbols, they should avoid the word "ligature," and in fact the passage
on page 534 of TUS 6.1 simply talks about how those symbols could be
"rendered."

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA
http://www.ewellic.org | @DougEwell ­
Received on Fri Jun 01 2012 - 12:55:10 CDT

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