Re: Code Point -- What is the integer?

From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Fri Apr 29 2005 - 06:17:24 CST

  • Next message: Bob Eaton: "Re: Transliterator"

    On Fri, 29 Apr 2005, Hans Aberg wrote:

    > An abstract character, as opposed to a character, is a formal concept
    > within the Unicode standard. This is fact mentioned in the
    > http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr17/
    > "The word abstract means that these objects are defined by convention."

    I've noticed that too, but it really puzzles me. On the other hand, the
    scope of the definition seems to be that document only.

    What is a character (generally, as opposite to abstract character)
    that is _not_ defined by convention? The very idea seems to postulate an
    ontology where concepts can exist independently of human life.

    My gut feeling is that "abstract" is just an attribute that has been
    thrown in different contexts - undoubtedly in an attempt to clarify
    things, but often failing to do that.

    -- 
    Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Apr 29 2005 - 06:20:03 CST