On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 12:34:40PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: > On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 04:47:18PM +0200, Radovan Garabik wrote: > > > The situation is IMHO quite similar to german for using Fraktur > > (S?tterlin) script - it is a latin script, and unicode consortium > > (IMHO rightfully) decided that it is a typesetting difference - not an > > encoding one (you can - and sometimes you do - typeset english text > > using Fraktur fonts, after all). If Germans were using it still today, > > you would have exactly the same problems as with CJK scripts now (of > > course, the complexity of CJK is much greater than that of a latin > > scripts) > > I disagree. The Han Unification issue is more like the difference > between the latin and the italic character sets. Yes, many characters
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. > 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 > > > 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 :-)) > > > 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 > > > 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. > > > > > > > "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. > > > 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 agree that, except for the oriental languages and legacy systems, > > > unicode is just about perfect in its ability to represent scripts in > > > many languages. > > > > and that is something terribly needed today, with this > > world wired together. > > I agree. > > However, Unicode is not a mature standard, so we need to be careful in > places where it would cause problems. > Of course. Nobody is talking about compulsory switching to unicode _right now_. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- | Radovan Garabik http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ | | __..--^^^--..__ garabik @ melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk | ----------------------------------------------------------- Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus. Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!
