From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 22 2005 - 07:42:13 CST
Otto Stolz wrote at 11:09 AM on Friday, April 22, 2005:
>Have you ever read Section C.6 of TUS
><http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/appC.pdf>?
So I quote from it:
"In the ISO/IEC framework, the unique character name is viewed as the
major resource for
both character semantics and cross-mapping among standards."
How are ISO/IEC entities actually using the character names as THE major
resource for character semantics? That is scary.
It's hard to imagine how this ridiculous set of practices can be defended
by supposedly computer savvy people - using the roman-centric, culturally
volatile NAMES as the THE major resource for character semantics and
cross-mapping between standards instead of using the almost arbitrary,
neutral, and more efficient numbers. The standards weight should be born
by the code points and not the names; anything beyond the code points
should represent levels of indirection and therefore be changeable.
And this section:
"The disparities between the Unicode 1.0 names and ISO/IEC 10646 names
have been remedied by adoption of ISO/IEC 10646 names in the Unicode
Standard. If the Unicode 1.0 name differed from the ISO/IEC 10646 name,
then the previous name is provided as a dedicated informative data field
in the Unicode Character Database."
clearly shows that the Unicode Standard HAS been changed in the past. But
now that it is tracking ISO/IEC, the real problem lies with these wacky
ISO/IEC standards practices and should therefore be taken up with ISO/
IEC. Do they have public email lists analogous to unicode@unicode.org?
But having read this, I now definitely agree with the idea of deprecating
the character names in the Unicode Standard (let ISO/IEC do whatever they
want with them), and the setting up of another group of localized
standards that, through the unique unchanging code points, alias the
changeable character names, whose sole purpose would be for human interfacing.
Character names used as programmatic triggers is definitely a concept
worth deprecating.
Dean A. Snyder
Assistant Research Scholar
Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project
Computer Science Department
Whiting School of Engineering
218C New Engineering Building
3400 North Charles Street
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218
office: 410 516-6850
cell: 717 817-4897
www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi/
http://users.adelphia.net/~deansnyder/
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