Re: Why people still want to encode precomposed letters

From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Sun Nov 16 2008 - 01:42:36 CST

  • Next message: Asmus Freytag: "Re: Why people still want to encode precomposed letters"

    Doug Ewell wrote:

    > "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela at cs dot tut dot fi> wrote:
    >
    >> I think it is best to explain realistically that characters with
    >> diacritic marks will not be added to Unicode as separately encoded,
    >> i.e. as code points, as a matter of policy. You can say this in
    >> different formulations and tones, of course. There’s no point in
    >> getting into long arguments.
    >
    > In fairness, I can't fault Karl for wanting to provide a newcomer
    > with a reasoned explanation for the policy, […]

    I wasn’t faulting anyone. If you read between the lines, you’ll see that I
    don’t think there is any a reasoned explanation for the policy, so it is
    best to give just an explanation of the policy. You might say that a
    reasoned explanation exists, but it would be just someone’s view on the
    matter and, more importantly, it would be far longer and far more complex
    that a newcomer wants or could follow. Remember that most people are very
    confused about Unicode, even if you don’t consider diacritic marks at all.

    > Newcomers hate it when we tell them, "That's just the way it is.
    > Unicode won't change. Deal with it."

    If that’s the truth, telling it is the best we can do to a newcomer. It’s
    not a pleasant task to tell such things, of course.

    In an ideal world you could add “Well, it has a reasoned explanation, but is
    quite long and complex, and you need to know well the basics of Unicode and
    a lot about the history of Unicode to understand it. You can find it at
    http://www.unicode.org/…”

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


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