Re: [OT] French Government Bans the Term 'E-Mail'

[John Cowan]

Patrick Andries scripsit:

> Obviously, the AP has found someone to say it is artificial. Actually, a
> study made by the Quebec linguist Marie-Éva de Villers(*) shows that
> newspapers (like Le Monde) in France as in Québec tend to use more and more
> the term now preferred by the French government.

I'm also glad to learn the French for "portmanteau word", viz.
"forme télescopique".  The former term was devised by Lewis Carroll for
his coinages "chortle" (chuckle+snort) and "galumph" (gallop+triumph).
Modern examples are "brunch" (breakfast+lunch), "smog" (smoke+fog), and
"Chunnel" (Channel+tunnel).

-- 
John Cowan  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  www.reutershealth.com  ccil.org/~cowan
Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos  --Lithuanian proverb
Deus dedit dentes; deus dabit panem --Latin version thereof
Deity donated dentition;
  deity'll donate doughnuts --English version by Muke Tever
God gave gums; God'll give granary  --Version by Mat McVeagh

Re: [OT] French Government Bans the Term 'E-Mail'

[Karljürgen Feuerherm]

Philippe Verdy wrote on July 20, 2003 at 6:23 PM
>also like the term "courriel" which sounds and writes better with the
French orthograph than the imported acronym "e-mail", or "email" (confuzing
with the French term "émail" which is the material that covers teeth, or a
decoration and protection material that covers plates

Enamel in English.

K

Re: [OT] French Government Bans the Term 'E-Mail'

[Michael Everson]

At 19:56 -0400 2003-07-20, Patrick Andries wrote:

Yahoo's title is obviously overblown ("sexed up" like the BBC says).
And isn't *that* the meme of the moment. One idiot said it and it 
spread like a virus. Ick.

Obviously, the AP has found someone to say it is artificial.
Of course, all language is artificial.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: [OT] French Government Bans the Term 'E-Mail'

[Patrick Andries]

- Original Message - 
From: "Michael Everson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



> Off-topic, but interesting. This just crossed my desk
>
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=518&u=/ap/20030718/ap_on_re_eu/france_out_with__e_mail__3&printer=1

Yahoo's title is obviously overblown ("sexed up" like the BBC says). The
word is not banned, the governement simply decided to use in its own texts
another term (viz. « courriel ») without imposing this decision upon anyone
else.

Obviously, the AP has found someone to say it is artificial. Actually, a
study made by the Quebec linguist Marie-Éva de Villers(*) shows that
newspapers (like Le Monde) in France as in Québec tend to use more and more
the term now preferred by the French government.

In the same vein, the Times of London (**) had a sarcastic article, of
course, describing the quixotic efforts of pigheaded Frenchmen to use French
words to describe modern concepts. How quaint ! Needless to say, this
article caused many a Gallic roar of laughter on French terminology lists.
More particularly because the articles contains several factual errors
(hacker is not translated by fouineur, but a series of other terms like
pirate, casseur, mordu, etc., computer is used less and less and ordinateur
or ordi are firmly established).

More seriously, it is interesting to note that this must be one of the first
times that a modern computer term coined in Quebec (or at least mainly used
in Quebec) is accepted by an official body in France. In Quebec, the term is
used systematically in books, documentation and advertising.

P. A.

- 0 - 0 - 0
(*) http://www.ledevoir.com/2003/07/11/31543.html
(**) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-740610,00.html

Re: About the European MES-2 subset

[Peter Kirk]

On 20/07/2003 13:50, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

At 12:38 -0700 2003-07-20, Peter Kirk wrote:

   

Indeed. Where can I get the Last Resort font for Windows (2000)? If 
the answer is nowhere, I guess I am stuck with Arial Unicode MS or 
the horrible-looking (the J always grates!) Code2000.
 

I'll go have a chat with some of my Apple colleagues about this.
   

It's unlikely that your Apple colleagues can do anything for
the "J" in Code2000.
Best regards,

James Kass
.
 

James, just to clarify since you are here: I am very grateful for the 
fonts Code2000 and Code2001 and that you have made these so easily 
available at http://home.att.net/~jameskass/. I don't like some of the 
glyph shapes, especially the J with a cross-bar like a T. But it is a 
lot better than nothing. When I need nice glyphs for particular Unicode 
ranges, I look elsewhere, though sometimes in vain. For example, who 
else even tries to cover the mathematial symbols in plane 1, at least in 
a downloadable font?

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/

Re: [OT] French Government Bans the Term 'E-Mail'

[Philippe Verdy]

On Sunday, July 20, 2003 9:56 PM, Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Off-topic, but interesting. This just crossed my desk
> http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=518&u=/ap/20030718/ap_on_re_eu/france_out_with__e_mail__3&printer=1

This is not a ban of the technology, just a ban of a term in official publications. 
The term "e-mail" (or any other term) is not banned from private conversations and 
documents...

Official terminology, published several years ago as "mél", is considered stupid for 
most French readers (only the French ISP Wanadoo tried to use it to name one of its 
service, but this trademark usage has been abandonned, in favor of "messagerie" to 
designate the service, "message" for any technology, and "courriel" for the specific 
use with SMTP addresses).

The French Canadian term "courriel" is much more widely accepted now in France, and in 
fact I also like the term "courriel" which sounds and writes better with the French 
orthograph than the imported acronym "e-mail", or "email" (confuzing with the French 
term "émail" which is the material that covers teeth, or a decoration and protection 
material that covers plates), or "imail".

When the term "mél" was published, it was a simple approxiative phonetic 
transliteration of "mail", not "e-mail"... I have supported and used since long the 
term "courriel" as much more acceptable than "e-mail", and "courriel" is now often 
used by journalists and radio speakers.

Yahoo is very late in this news: the French official terminology already banned the 
term "e-mail", but the first choice of "mél" had to be removed, as everybody refused 
it. As the term courriel is now widely used, known and recognized, there was no other 
choice than using the prefered "courriel" instead of the studid "mél".

There is no requirement for commercial services, despite what Yahoo seems to suggest, 
as they can continue to use "e-mail" in their ads (but the english acronym should be 
explained in French with a little asterisk, in legal documents, like commercial 
contracts, licencing and usage policy terms, ...).

One final note: the term "courriel" looks and sounds like "logiciel" (software) and a 
lot of terms ending in "-iel", this suffix being used to denote "électronique". So 
"courrier" can be viewed as a contraction of "courrier électronique" (electronic mail 
was also contracted into "email" in English, except that many terms are created with a 
"e-" prefix in English, sometimes as an acronym like "e-mail" or contracted in a 
single prefixed word like "email")

-- 
Philippe.
Spams non tolérés: tout message non sollicité sera
rapporté à vos fournisseurs de services Internet.

Re: About the European MES-2 subset

[Michael Everson]

At 20:50 + 2003-07-20, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 > At 12:38 -0700 2003-07-20, Peter Kirk wrote:
 >Indeed. Where can I get the Last Resort font for Windows (2000)? If
 >the answer is nowhere, I guess I am stuck with Arial Unicode MS or
 >the horrible-looking (the J always grates!) Code2000.
 I'll go have a chat with some of my Apple colleagues about this.
It's unlikely that your Apple colleagues can do anything for
the "J" in Code2000.
I wasn't talking about that, but if you'd like my opinion, I hate that J too.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: About the European MES-2 subset

[jameskass]

> At 12:38 -0700 2003-07-20, Peter Kirk wrote:
> 
> >Indeed. Where can I get the Last Resort font for Windows (2000)? If 
> >the answer is nowhere, I guess I am stuck with Arial Unicode MS or 
> >the horrible-looking (the J always grates!) Code2000.
> 
> I'll go have a chat with some of my Apple colleagues about this.

It's unlikely that your Apple colleagues can do anything for
the "J" in Code2000.

Best regards,

James Kass
.

Re: About the European MES-2 subset

[Michael Everson]

At 12:38 -0700 2003-07-20, Peter Kirk wrote:

Indeed. Where can I get the Last Resort font for Windows (2000)? If 
the answer is nowhere, I guess I am stuck with Arial Unicode MS or 
the horrible-looking (the J always grates!) Code2000.
I'll go have a chat with some of my Apple colleagues about this.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

[OT] French Government Bans the Term 'E-Mail'

[Michael Everson]

Off-topic, but interesting. This just crossed my desk 
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=518&u=/ap/20030718/ap_on_re_eu/france_out_with__e_mail__3&printer=1
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[Peter Kirk]

On 20/07/2003 06:20, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Philippe Verdy wrote on 07/19/2003 01:24:48 PM:

 

Isn't this page creating the idea for a specific block of
script-representative glyphs, that could be mapped in plane 14
as special supplementary characters ?
   

What would be the purpose of encoding these? I can't think of any. They 
certainly don't need to be encoded as distinct characters to use in a Last 
Resort font.

- Peter

 

One good reason would be so that a page like 
http://www.unicode.org/charts/ can be represented without having to use 
lots of .gifs, so for efficiency, searchability etc. Which is pretty 
much the same reason for defining any Unicode characters at all, given 
that documents and web pages can always be created, though inefficiently 
and unsearchably, from lots of images.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/

Re: About the European MES-2 subset

[Peter Kirk]

On 19/07/2003 17:32, John Cowan wrote:

Peter Kirk scripsit:

 

But it can be useful to know whether what you are getting is hangul etc, 
or an Indian script, or some other script you don't know, or some 
symbols or mathematical codes, or else the result of some kind of 
encoding conversion error.
   

Precisely where the Last Resort font shines, without carrying the
overhead in glyph images of a normal giant font.
 

Indeed. Where can I get the Last Resort font for Windows (2000)? If the 
answer is nowhere, I guess I am stuck with Arial Unicode MS or the 
horrible-looking (the J always grates!) Code2000.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[Michael Everson]

At 09:56 -0600 2003-07-20, John H. Jenkins wrote:

No, it uses the acutal Unicode characters, and just has a huge cmap 
that maps everything in Unicode to the glyph for its block.
That is just so cool. :-)
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[Rick McGowan]

> > What would be the purpose of encoding these? I can't think of any.
> > They certainly don't need to be encoded as distinct characters to use
> > in a Last Resort font.
>
> Mostly for documentation purpose,

Why bother to encode them as distinct characters? "For purposes of  
documentation" isn't a good reason to encode these things, which are simply  
a set of fall-back glyphs for user convenience to show what isn't  
installed! If you want documentation for the Last Resort font, just make  
documentation (or ask Apple to make some).

Rick

Re: About the European MES-2 subset

[John H. Jenkins]

On Friday, July 18, 2003, at 4:45 PM, Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote:

A question mark is a sign of a bad conversion from Unicode (to a code 
page
that did not contain the character). This would likely happen on the 
Mac too
rather than the Last Resort font, wouldn't it?

MS Explorer on the Mac converts Unicode to old Mac scripts which it 
then renders.  That's why all the question marks when the page is 
looked at with MS Explorer.

==
John H. Jenkins
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/

Re: Karen Language Representation in Unicode

[John H. Jenkins]

On Sunday, July 20, 2003, at 7:38 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Heather Batterham wrote on 07/20/2003 06:46:16 AM:

The second interest I have is in the development of word processing
tools that utilize the contents of unicode.  I use a Macintosh with  
OSX
installed.  The basic language packages are very good but they do not
have the Burmese script included.
The only working font implementation for Burmese script that I know of  
is
a one that we have (in beta), implemented using Graphite rendering.  
It's
available at
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php? 
site_id=nrsi&item_id=GraphiteFonts.

We could probably help you get it to work on Mac OS X.  Meanwhile,  
Xenotype claims to have a Burmese language kit for Mac OS X  
(), although nobody at  
Apple has seen it, so we can't confirm that it works as advertised.

==
John H. Jenkins
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[John H. Jenkins]

On Saturday, July 19, 2003, at 1:15 PM, Michael Everson wrote:

So fonts containing these glyphs could be designed to display these 
glyphs, in a way similar to the current assignment of control 
pictures.
Um, that's what the Last Resort font does, outside of Unicode encoding 
space. (I don't think PUA characters are used, actually, but I could 
be wrong.

No, it uses the acutal Unicode characters, and just has a huge cmap 
that maps everything in Unicode to the glyph for its block.

==
John H. Jenkins
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[John H. Jenkins]

On Sunday, July 20, 2003, at 7:37 AM, Philippe Verdy wrote:

Mostly for documentation purpose, but also in most system that want to 
be more informative to users missing a font for a particular script. 
Michael also judged it to be useful enough to create such a font for 
Apple, and Apple thought it would be useful for its Mac users.
Er, no.  Apple thought it would be useful for its Mac users and 
commissioned Michael to make glyphs.  (And I personally think he's done 
an excellent job.)

==
John H. Jenkins
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/

Re: About the European MES-2 subset

[Michael \(michka\) Kaplan]

Well, I thought Arial Unicode MS is a little pricey for just putting it
anywhere? I may be wrong here (and I have no idea how much is costs,
really), but the huge size compared to megafonts like Code2000, which is
based in part on the "rich" Arial typeface heritage, also makes it a font of
some value and a legitimate "value add" where it is...

Of course, all of this is IMHO, as I have no real knowledge of what Office
or even nearby Typography think about any of these things

MichKa [MS]

- Original Message - 
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 6:20 AM
Subject: Re: About the European MES-2 subset


> > On Windows, the "cannot find a font for it" situation is the NULL glyph.
> The
> > Last Resort font is cool but a Code2000 stab at the actual glyph is
> (IMHO)
> > cooler than both.:-)
>
> Then wouldn't it make sense for Arial Unicode MS to be included with
> Windows rather than just with Office?
>
>
>
> - Peter
>
>
> --
-
> Peter Constable
>
> Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
> 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
> Tel: +1 972 708 7485
>
>
>

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[Michael Everson]

At 08:20 -0500 2003-07-20, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

What would be the purpose of encoding these? I can't think of any. 
They  certainly don't need to be encoded as distinct characters to 
use in a Last  Resort font.
I am certain more people want to interchange the LITTER DUDE than 
would want to interchange script block indicators.

(Ken suggested offline that this name might be better-received than 
the DO NOT LITTER SIGN)
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: Karen Language Representation in Unicode

[Tom Gewecke]

>The second interest I have is in the development of word processing tools
>that utilize the contents of unicode.  I use a Macintosh with OSX
>installed.  The basic language packages are very good but they do not have
>the Burmese script included.

See this site for an existing Burmese kit:

http://www.xenotypetech.com/osxBurmese.html

Re: Karen Language Representation in Unicode

[Peter_Constable]

Michael Everson wrote on 07/20/2003 07:09:40 AM:

> I've discussed the matter with Christian and you can write to me about 
it.

It would be appreciated if you could please include Martin Hosken 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and me in that discussion.


- Peter


---
Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485

Re: Karen Language Representation in Unicode

[Peter_Constable]

Heather Batterham wrote on 07/20/2003 06:46:16 AM:

> The second interest I have is in the development of word processing 
> tools that utilize the contents of unicode.  I use a Macintosh with OSX 
> installed.  The basic language packages are very good but they do not 
> have the Burmese script included.

The only working font implementation for Burmese script that I know of is 
a one that we have (in beta), implemented using Graphite rendering. It's 
available at 
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=GraphiteFonts.

Unfortunately, Graphite is not currently available for use on the Mac, 
though I understand significant interest has been expressed in seeing a 
Mac port. A Linux port is in progress.



- Peter


---
Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[Philippe Verdy]

On Sunday, July 20, 2003 3:20 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Philippe Verdy wrote on 07/19/2003 01:24:48 PM:
> > Isn't this page creating the idea for a specific block of
> > script-representative glyphs, that could be mapped in plane 14
> > as special supplementary characters ?
> 
> What would be the purpose of encoding these? I can't think of any.
> They certainly don't need to be encoded as distinct characters to use
> in a Last Resort font.

Mostly for documentation purpose, but also in most system that want to be more 
informative to users missing a font for a particular script. Michael also judged it to 
be useful enough to create such a font for Apple, and Apple thought it would be useful 
for its Mac users. From usefulness comes the use, and thus some legitimacy to encode 
it within text, as special symbols that should not be represented as the normal glyph, 
but with these symbols. It's also a fact that these symbols are used (as bitmaps) in 
the online Unicode charts (not charmaps, sorry for the wrong term), and probably with 
the Michael's custom font in the published Unicode book.

It's true that one can make a documentation without actually using a font with 
assigned codepoints for them. (A collection of SVG graphic could work for publishing 
purposes).

But editing the cmap of a TrueType font to include all possible codepoints would 
require to map all the 17 planes in the cmap, and unless the cmap is compressed, this 
would require 1,114,112 mappings, or more than 2MB only for the cmap.

This is probably too much for a default font, even if the system uses paging to access 
this TrueType font. In fact, a font with only the single glyphs ordered by allocation 
date for the corresponding block, and an extra table with a a cmap-like table using 
ranges of codepoints instead of simple entries would probably make things better (of 
course this would be an extension to the standard tables used by classic fonts). 
Without such TTF extension, it would be simpler to map only surrogates, and thus use 
only 128KB
for a UTF-16 based cmap. I don't know the internals of the OpenType format, may be 
such compressed format for internal tables already exists that allows representing 
ranges, or there is space with table IDs allowed for application-specific custom 
tables.

Re: About the European MES-2 subset

[Peter_Constable]

> On Windows, the "cannot find a font for it" situation is the NULL glyph. 
The
> Last Resort font is cool but a Code2000 stab at the actual glyph is 
(IMHO)
> cooler than both.:-)

Then wouldn't it make sense for Arial Unicode MS to be included with 
Windows rather than just with Office?



- Peter


---
Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[Peter_Constable]

Philippe Verdy wrote on 07/19/2003 01:24:48 PM:

> Isn't this page creating the idea for a specific block of
> script-representative glyphs, that could be mapped in plane 14
> as special supplementary characters ?

What would be the purpose of encoding these? I can't think of any. They 
certainly don't need to be encoded as distinct characters to use in a Last 
Resort font.


- Peter


---
Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[Philippe Verdy]

On Sunday, July 20, 2003 2:21 PM, Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > With SVG graphics containing character objects and drawing
> > primitives 
> 
> I have no idea what this means. I used Fontographer.

SVG is a W3C-promoted standard for Scalable Vector Graphics,
based on a XML language, and allowing to describe vector
graphics with 2D primitives, and it can be used to produce
custom "fonts" of symbols, in a more appealing way than with
bitmaps.

A SVG graphic can be used at the source URL of an 
or  element within HTML. Most vectorial graphic tool
can generate or conert their proprietary format with SVG, used
as a lingua franca for vector graphics interchanges (deprecating
legacy proprietary formats like MacDraw and WMF, or the many
other formats created by every drawing tool on the market).

SVG graphics are now very popular and recognized by many
publishing layout engines, and they are great for many websites
that wish to compute and generate dynamic graphics (because
these graphics can be updated online with its DOM tree, and
easily generated from templates by XSLT processors).

The palette of SVG primitives is rich and includes many
presentation features (including colors, shading, transparency
effects, regions combining operators). Recent versions of
MS-Office use SVG within their new XML document format to
embed graphics, or presentation effects, without the limitations
of HTML.

When I look at the Apple's Developer page, all what I see in
the table of glyphs and in the description can be represented
with a SVG graphic, including Unicode-encoded text primitives
for the representative glyph chosen in their table. In a first
approach, each defined PostScript name can be bound to
a SVG filename, and a font can be made from it, by packing
all these SVG in a ZIP archive, which can also contain
description tables. Then any font format can be derived from
this editable format.

Re: Last Resort Glyphs (was: About the European MES-2 subset)

[Michael Everson]

At 23:34 +0200 2003-07-19, Philippe Verdy wrote:

I'm still convinced that these glyphs are much more informative than 
a default glyph showing a "?", a white rectangle, or a black losange 
with a mirrored white "?"...
Of course they are.

And Unicode also uses these glyphs in the index page for its charmaps,
You mean "for its charts". Please.

but they are shown as poor bitmaps (may be the PDF or book version 
use your glyphs in a document-embedded font)
That page is in HTML.

How were your glyphs contributed?
I, uh, drew them.

With SVG graphics containing character objects and drawing primitives
I have no idea what this means. I used Fontographer.

(it seems the simplest way to derive them, using the table shown in 
Apple's web page, with some exceptions for unassigned, reserved, 
forbidden or
surrogates symbols which require a distinct design)?
You can't "derive" these. You have to draw them individually.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Re: Karen Language Representation in Unicode

[Michael Everson]

I've discussed the matter with Christian and you can write to me about it.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

Karen Language Representation in Unicode

[Heath Batterham]

I would like to discuss the possibility of adding letters from the (BKaren alphabet to the Burmese script block in unicode.  It is my (Bintention to begin authorship of a Karen education syllabus and to do (Bthis I need the foundations of a universal writing code.   (B (B (BMr Christian Bauer appears to have done some work in this area and I (Bwould welcome communication with him and other people who may have (Bdone some work in this area.  (B (B (BThe second interest I have is in the development of word processing (Btools that utilize the contents of unicode.  I use a Macintosh with (BOSX installed.  The basic language packages are very good but they do (Bnot have the Burmese script included.  I would like to develop a (Bwriting tool that is similar to the Japanese (B$B$3$H$($j(Bwhere phonetics (Bare typed in and drop down windows offer suggested scripts or fonts. (B (B (BI may be contacted via email at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and I look forward (Bto further communications. (B (B (Bregards (B (BHeath Batterham (B (B

RE: About the European MES-2 subset

[Kent Karlsson]

> >This is not to say that the MESes are unproblematic.  To mention just
> >two points not already mentioned: none of the "new" math characters
> >are included even in MES-3 (a, b), despite that "all" math characters
> >were supposed to be included

Michael E responded:

> That isn't true.

Eeh, well, disregarding some CJK compat chars that have
general category Sm (which are rightly excluded from the MESes), 
the following "blocks" (or formally, closely corresponding
"collections") are missing from MES-3A (the largest of the MESes):

27C0..27EF; Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A
27F0..27FF; Supplemental Arrows-A
2900..297F; Supplemental Arrows-B
2980..29FF; Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B
2A00..2AFF; Supplemental Mathematical Operators
2B00..2BFF; Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows
and (much as I dislike them, and they haven't GC Sm but L{u,l})
1D400..1D7FF; Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols

(MES-3A lists "collections" rather than individual characters, and
includes some code points are not (yet) bound to any character.)

But are you saying that it was not the the intent to include "all"
math characters?  But "all" the "old" ones (the ones that were
included in 10646 at the time the MESes were deviced) are
included even in the smaller MES-2.

> >and not even MES-3 covers all official minority languages.
> 
> What's missing?

Hebrew, used for Yiddish, which is now an official minority
language in Sweden.  (Though various languages written with
the Arabic script are more common in official information to
the public.)  But I understand that was excluded since (in practice)
anything bidi was excluded from the MESes.

Also of "European" interest, though not for a "language" per se,
are Braille patterns and modern musical symbols.  (Not for "all"
"European" fonts, though, but the same goes for math symbols.)

/kent k