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

From: William_J_G Overington <wjgo_10009_at_btinternet.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2012 07:47:26 +0100 (BST)

On Friday 1 June 2012, Asmus Freytag <asmusf_at_ix.netcom.com> wrote:
 
> All of these things remain solutions in search of a problem.
 
Well, my research would assist in providing communication through the language barrier for such tasks as seeking information about relatives and friends after a disaster.
 
Simulations have been produced for that and for seeking a meal with no gluten-containing ingredients in it when in a foreign country.
 
Also for automated localization of signs in art galleries.
 
> The interesting thing I note is the level of enthusiasm with which these are discussed here, when, at the same time, a lowly single character currency symbol, with no special meta-coding, layout support, algorithm changes, etc. was so roundly dismissed - despite all the evidence that not supporting it in face of user demands would impact the ability of implementers to sell into a not insubstantial market.
 
Well, not by me. I supported the encoding of the Indian Rupee Symbol to be promptly done so that it was ready to be used within the six-month time scale that was set for introducing the symbol into use.
 
> Sometimes I wonder what's going on ...
 
Indeed. There are possibilities for great progress to be made with what can be done using a stream of plain text characters and yet the rules for encoding seem to prevent them even being considered.
 
There is a paradox in that, at present, in order for a new electronic character-based communication technology to become introduced into regular Unicode that evidence of its existing widespread use in a Private Use Area context is needed: yet producing that existing widespread use in a Private Use Area context is both unrealistic because it would be a Private Use Area implementation and also that very supposed Private Use Area implementation would damage the implementation and use of a regular Unicode solution for many years.
 
The point is that such new technologies need to be introduced in a process that is managed by Unicode and ISO Committees. For Unicode, the code points could be encoded by the Unicode Technical Committee yet the individual encodings using those code points could be carried out by another Unicode Committee, which particular committee being a matter to be decided.
 
William Overington
 
2 June 2012
Received on Sat Jun 02 2012 - 01:51:58 CDT

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