On 10/12/2019 3:15 AM, Fred Brennan via Unicode wrote:
There seems to be no conscionable reason for such a long delay after the
approval.
If that's just how things are done, fine, I certainly can't change the whole
system. But imagine if you had to wait two years to even have a chance of
using a letter you desperately need to write your language? Imagine if the
letter "Q" was unencoded and Noto refused to add it for two more years?
Well, as long as we are imagining things, then consider a scenario where
the UTC is presented a proposal for encoding a writing system which is
reported as an historic artifact of the 18th century, "fallen out of
normal use", yet encodes it anyway based on the proposal provided in 1999:
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L1999/n1933.pdf
and publishes it in Unicode 3.2 in 2002:
https://www.unicode.org/standard/supported.html
Then imagine that a community works to revive use of that script (now
known as Baybayin) and extends character use in it based on similar
characters in related, more contemporaneous scripts, but that the first
time the UTC actually formally hears about that extension is on July 18,
2019:
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19258r-baybayin-ra.pdf
And then imagine that despite a 17 year gap before this supposedly
urgent defect in an encoding is reported to the UTC, that the UTC in
fact approves encoding of U+170D TAGALOG LETTER RA at its very *first*
opportunity, eight days later, on July 26, 2019. Further imagine that
the UTC immediately publishes what amounts to a "letter of intent" to
publish this character when it can:
https://www.unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html#future
It may then be understandable that some UTC participants might be
puzzled to be accused of unconscionable delays in this case.
I understand the frustration that you are expressing, but it simply
isn't feasible for every proposal's advocates to get their particular
candidates pushed to the front of the line for publication. Unicode 13.0
is creaking down the track towards its March 10, 2020 publication, but
it already is contending with 5930 new characters (as well as additional
emoji sequences beyond that), every one of which was approved by the UTC
*prior* to July 26, 2019 and all of which are already in some advanced
stage of ISO ballot consideration.
In the meantime, Baybayin users are inconvenienced, sure, but it is
unlikely that the interim solutions will just break, because nobody is
opposed to U+170D TAGALOG LETTER RA, and it is exceedingly unlikely that
that code point would be moved before its eventual publication in the
standard in March, 2021.
--Ken
