> > I disagree. The Han Unification issue is more like the difference > > between the latin and the italic character sets. Yes, many characters
On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 07:20:21PM +0200, Radovan Garabik wrote: > No, because latin (upright) and italics are used interchangebly, > whereas fraktur carries implicit connotation of language used - > just like different glyphs for unified CJK charset. I'm sorry. Not italics, but Old Italic. U10300-U1032F. This includes letters like U10308 OLD ITALIC LETTER THE (a circle with an X in it) as well as letters like U10301 OLD ITALIC LETTER BE (essentially the same as a capital roman B). Here, we could assume a common history, and define a map which relates many of the characters.. much as has been done with Han Unification. > > are similar, however there are also some characters which are unique > > to each representaiton. > > > > Also, Unicode does include Fraktur characters. > > but in mathematical symbols - that is a completely different beast Please explain why it matters to the reader whether the letter A is classifed by the unicode consortium as mathematical [or not]? > > > I am really not sure if unicode went the right way, I feel the > > > ability to display Chinese name in a Japanese document using > > > Chinese glyphs (or vice versa) is something that should not be get > > > rid of... > > > > And, this could be rectified -- with Unicode 3.1, they have the code > > space to represent each major representation of the character set. > > if only they instead of talking how bad is unicode started working on > improving it (duck, run :-)) I don't have the technical skill nor the political connections to properly contribute to the unicode consortium. I can, however, point out major problem areas, and I like to think of that as valuable [at least to Debian -- I like to think that the members of the Unicode Consortium are already aware of these problems]. > > > perhaps it should consider them to be different scripts with > > > different encodings, but when would it stop? Making italics, > > > boldface etc. to be different characters? > > > > Unicode already does that. Take a look at the mathematical > > alphanumeric symbols [1D400-1D744]. For example: 1D400 MATHEMATICAL > > BOLD CAPITAL A > > the reason and purpose of these characters is quite different from > "base" unicode characters The point is that unicode already does support the things you were suggesting as more unreasonable than indicating oriental language. > > > As for X11, fonts are being rapidly developped. > > > > For currently relevant policy it matters what actually works. > > of course. That's why my proposal is very mildly worded and gives a > lot of freedom to maintainers to decide what charset they want. Agreed. > > > > "Package may (at the discretion of the maintainer) include > > > > documentation files in other encodings, if they are present also in > > > > canonical encoding, and if the encodings used are clearly marked. > > > > If a particular font is required, that should be clearly marked." > > > > > > You do not know what is a particular font... one of > > > (traditional|simplified)C,J,K, or the full font name? > > > > I'm not sure I understand this question (I don't know enough about > > oriental languages and fonts to give a full answer in any event). > > well, would you indicate just "this README needs japanese unicode font" > and the user has to figure out by himself what is that > or "this README needs -misc-fixed-*-*-*-ja-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1" > and the user is fubar when he does not have that font. I think "needs japanese unicode font" might suffice. Perhaps a package name which includes that font would also be good. An X font spec would, of course, be necessary if you wanted a program to "just work". It depends on context. > > > More appropriate example from the history is the war between > > > EBDIC, ASCII and other proprietary encodings... thanks god one and > > > only one encoding won. > > > > ebdic vs. ascii wasn't about supported languages. > > true, but the mess in encodings was quite comparable to what is there > today outside of Latin-1 world. And the peace ASCII brought could be > compared to peace that (hopefully :-)) unicode brings one day. I'll accept your analogy. (In the name of peace :). Thanks, -- Raul
