Re: proposal for a "Standard-Exit" or "Namespace" character

From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Mon Apr 13 2009 - 23:06:50 CDT

  • Next message: Dennis Heuer: "Re: proposal for a "Standard-Exit" or "Namespace" character"

    Dennis Heuer wrote:

    > escape codes are ambiguous too because of the many existing. this is
    > why unicode specifies that 'if' ISO-2022 is used (...). this is not
    > what i mean. i mean a special character that, in all cases, states that
    > now another character set is used and the program will not be capable
    > of printing senseful text if it doesn't support character spaces. this
    > shall be clear and always valid up to eternity and by no means
    > relativated by an 'if'. the character is not to be used otherwise, and
    > the program may print an error. escape sequences, instead, are
    > generally just filtered out.
    >
    > also, and i wrote that already, i doubt that unicode will ever be the
    > only character set in use. this target, specifically considering all the
    > fancy characters, is fully illusionary. and, as i already wrote,
    > unicode itself would profit from keeping new code blocks outside the
    > official character set until some years of critique have passed them.
    > this makes sense if you think a bit longer about it.
    >
    Don't these two paragraphs contradict one another? On the one hand, you
    want a character in Unicode (in ISO 10646) that always and eternally
    means something, so there is no "if" involved, and on the other hand you
    say that Unicode isn't always going to be there to determine things
    always and forever. There's the "if" of "if we are using ISO 10646" and
    the "if" of "if we are using ISO 2022." One of those "if"s is acceptable
    but the other one isn't?

    It sounds like you're trying to solve a problem that's already been
    solved, and you don't like the existing solution because it's more
    powerful than you expected.

    (As for "code blocks outside the official character set", I direct your
    attention to the Private Use Area, which is exactly what they are for:
    blocks of code to be used outside the official character set.)

    ~mark



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