From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Tue Dec 23 2003 - 04:59:06 EST
Andrew C. West <andrewcwest at alumni dot princeton dot edu> wrote:
>> We do know that "Accordance with the Roadmap" is often the sole
>> justification for the code positions specified in proposals, as
>> discussed in a thread some months ago.
>
> I don't recall that thread, but is there anything intrinsically wrong
> in proposing to use the same codepoints for a proposal that are given
> in the roadmaps ?
Well, no. I mean, it's not like I think the code points HAVE to be
moved gratuitously, just to make a point or something.
The impression I get, which is probably totally off base, is that when
Script X is first considered a candidate for possible future encoding,
Michael or somebody looks around for a big-enough empty spot in the
Roadmap and says, "Hmm, let's put it... there." There are zones for RTL
scripts and a rough guideline for zones in the SMP, but in general it's
pretty much open territory.
Years later, when some of the adjoining allocations may not have gotten
off the ground and others have suddenly sprung into being (like the FUPA
extensions, which IIRC were never roadmapped until after they were
proposed), the formal proposal for Script X is written and cites the
Roadmap as the only justification for the proposed code points, even if
there might be other reasons supporting (or controverting) that
criterion.
Usually it doesn't matter what code positions a script gets, as long as
small alphabets are aligned on a half-block boundary (for SCSU), but it
might be nice sometimes to see a rationale other than "Accordance with
the Roadmap," or a short blurb explaining why the Roadmap had the script
there in the first place.
This is NOT a huge problem for me, just something I've noticed. With
all the careful scrutiny that character proposals get, on everything
from glyphs to properties, the code position assignments seem relatively
arbitrary.
> I deliberately followed the roadmap codepoints for my recent
> 'Phags-pa proposal even though I think 'Phags-pa probably belongs in
> the SMP (but I don't really care where 'Phags-pa is encoded as long as
> it is encoded, so I am happy to defer to Michael, Rick and Ken in this
> regard); and then WG2 in their wisdom decided to reallocate the block
> three rows north of the roadmapped codepoints ... so maybe you can't
> assume that roadmap codepoints are carved in stone.
I didn't see the minutes of the meeting where that decision was made.
What was the rationale for moving it?
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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