Re: Lao Script Block - Missing Letters

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Sun May 29 2011 - 20:54:26 CDT

  • Next message: Asmus Freytag: "Re: Original Aim of Unicode"

    On 5/29/2011 5:05 PM, Richard Wordingham wrote:
    > Possibly they might have been omitted as not commercially
    > significant - there was a time when Unicode was not intended to
    > ultimately encode every script.

    That's news to me, especially the latter part. I think you owe us the
    some source for this claim.

     From the beginning, "Universal" has been the been one of the primary
    goals for Unicode (early papers would cite "Universal" as one of the
    three sources of "Uni" in the name).

    The Lao block was indeed coded very early, and the earliest versions of
    Unicode were to a large extent a superset of then existing character
    repertoires. Those existing repertoires were almost all based on modern
    usage only, because most of them were from 8-bit character code sets,
    which needed to be rather selective.

    But it was always contemplated that additional research might attest
    other characters (including historic or rarely used forms). These were
    to be encoded after undergoing a formal review of a corresponding
    character encoding proposal. Many scripts in Unicode have been extended
    in this manner over time.

    If these claimed Lao characters really represent attested characters,
    such a proposal should be written up, submitted and reviewed.
    Speculation why that didn't happen earlier and/or misstating the goals
    of the enterprise are not helpful and will not contribute to getting the
    right characters encoded.

    A./



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