Re: A Potentially Useful Property - Last Informative Proposal

From: Richard Wordingham <richard.wordingham_at_ntlworld.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2012 14:05:28 +0100

On Sun, 29 Jul 2012 11:40:58 +0100
Michael Everson <everson_at_evertype.com> wrote:

> On 29 Jul 2012, at 11:15, Richard Wordingham wrote:
>
> >> http://decodeunicode.org
> >
> > I'm not sure how good a repository that is for characters after
> > Unicode 5.0. I'm wary of entering such data for fear it will be
> > lost if entered before the newer blocks are entered into the
> > system. Also, is there a significant risk that information will be
> > deleted to avoid the effort of translation?

> What is it that you want?

Ideally, an ever-updating Encyclopedia of Characters or perhaps an
Encyclopedia of Characters and Significant Glyphs and Sequences. That's
not far from the aim of "Decode Unicode". Wikipedia could approximate
this, though the ban on original research is a problem.

> It sounds as though you want something that doesn't exist.

A first approximation would be the collection of script and character
proposals for ISO 10646, but that needs clever indexing, as code points
and names change during the amendment process, and in some cases all
that is available is scanned in copies of what may be poor
photocopies, and so not amenable to computerised processing. I
jokingly referred to a cut down index as a character property. As I
started to explain the reference, which had puzzled some, it occurred
to me that someone may very well have compiled such an index and be
happy to share it.

An example of similar information is your collection of Tai script
proposals and related matter at
http://www.evertype.com/standards/tai/tai-scripts.html . That actually
seems a better way of holding the information for smallish scripts,
though it starts getting unwieldy once one reaches scripts the size of
the Myanmar script. The aim of your compilation is not the same as
mine - you haven't collected supplements following the provision of
basic support for a language.

My very specific need was information on U+19DA NEW TAI LUE THAM DIGIT
ONE. At the time I couldn't think of a quick method of finding it,
though I've now found it at
http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/N3380.pdf .

Richard.
Received on Sun Jul 29 2012 - 08:08:07 CDT

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