Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
William, I think you have a unreasonable idea of what a standard actually is. You have already made a standard and published it - I've seen all the posts at the FCP forum. All you have to do is let people use it. If a user community is going to exchange data, they will do so, and it just plain doesn't matter if some other user community were to exchange completely different data coincidentally using the same sequence of bytes. The problem is that you don't want a /standard/ - you already have one. You want a legitimacy for your ideas that they haven't earned, and you are trying to borrow that legitimacy from Unicode and ISO. What you don't understand is that the legitimacy you want to borrow is intimately tied in with the fact that Unicode has policies and procedures that they follow, one of which is they do not recognize scripts that haven't met the criteria for inclusion. From: William_J_G Overington > A feature of using the Private Use Area is that code point allocations are > made by a person or entity that is not a standards organization. Also, > Private Use Area code point assignments are not unique. Which has not kept other PUA standards like MUFI and CSUR from successfully exchanging data. In fact, they both have successfully demonstrated usage to the point that scripts have then been allocated for public use. > In many cases, neither of those features presents a problem for successful > use of a Private Use Area encoding. > However, although one can often not be concerned with the fact that the code > point assignment is not unique, the fact that it is not made by a standards > organization is a big problem if one is seeking to have a system that one has > invented taken up by people and companies generally. In other words, you want legitimacy that the idea has not earned. > For one of my present uses of the Private Use Area I am seeking to have a > system that I have invented taken up by people and companies generally. Then publish the standard and let them do it. If the idea is useful, then others will adopt it; if not, they won't. > However, I feel that there is no chance of a system that I have invented > being taken up by people and companies generally using a Private Use Area > encoding. Thus, I feel that I will not be able to present an encoding > proposal document showing existing widespread usa. This /feeling/ is specifically contradicted by the evidence of language communities adopting the MUFI and CSUR standards. > However, if the Unicode Technical Committee and the ISO Committee were to > agree to the principle of encoding my inventions in plane 13, not necessarily > using the particular items or symbols that I am at present using in my > research, yet the committees working out how to form a committee or > subcommittee to work out what to encode, then I feel that a group project > with lots of people contributing ideas could produce a wonderful system > encoded into plane 13 that could be of great usefulness to many people. If it is so wonderful and useful, there is no reason why you wouldn't be able to bring together a group of people to develop the standard in Plane 15 just as easily. If you can't do that, it's a pretty good indication that it's not as useful as you think it is. > My present goal is to have the opportunity to write a document requesting > that agreement in principle and for the document to be considered and > discussed by the committees and a formal decision made. The formal decision will be "no", because you have shown zero actual usage. > William Overington > 12 November 2012 -Van Anderson
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
On Saturday 10 November 2012, John Knightley wrote: > Whilst using the PUA is far from perfect at the end of the day it is better > than the alternative of not using the PUA. Yes. The Private Use Area is a very useful facility in that it allows characters of one's own designation to be added to a personally made font as one wishes. One can with many software applications then use the font and the characters much as one can use a commercial font that has just regular Unicode characters. Here are links to some forum posts where I have used Private Use Area characters in various circumstances. http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=9655#p9655 http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=16813#p16813 http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=16746#p16746 http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=16264#p16264 http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=17499#p17499 http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=17556#p17556 A feature of using the Private Use Area is that code point allocations are made by a person or entity that is not a standards organization. Also, Private Use Area code point assignments are not unique. In many cases, neither of those features presents a problem for successful use of a Private Use Area encoding. However, although one can often not be concerned with the fact that the code point assignment is not unique, the fact that it is not made by a standards organization is a big problem if one is seeking to have a system that one has invented taken up by people and companies generally. For one of my present uses of the Private Use Area I am seeking to have a system that I have invented taken up by people and companies generally. However, I feel that there is no chance of a system that I have invented being taken up by people and companies generally using a Private Use Area encoding. Thus, I feel that I will not be able to present an encoding proposal document showing existing widespread usa. However, if the Unicode Technical Committee and the ISO Committee were to agree to the principle of encoding my inventions in plane 13, not necessarily using the particular items or symbols that I am at present using in my research, yet the committees working out how to form a committee or subcommittee to work out what to encode, then I feel that a group project with lots of people contributing ideas could produce a wonderful system encoded into plane 13 that could be of great usefulness to many people. My present goal is to have the opportunity to write a document requesting that agreement in principle and for the document to be considered and discussed by the committees and a formal decision made. William Overington 12 November 2012
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
2012/11/10 john knightley : > Whilst using the PUA is far from perfect at the end of the day it is > better than the alternative of not using the PUA. > > Regards > John > > On 10 Nov 2012 17:37, "William_J_G Overington" > wrote: >> >> On Thursday 8 November 2012, Philippe Verdy wrote: >> >> > 2012/11/8 William_J_G Overington> : >> > > However, an encoding using a Private Use Area encoding has great >> > > problems in being implemented as a widespread system. >> >> > Wrong, this is what has been made during centuries if not millenium ! >> >> Well, the point that I am trying to make is that a new glyph that is used >> in an electronic communication system that uses the ISO/IEC 10646 character >> encoding system with the new glyph being encoded using a Private Use Area >> code point does, of necessity, have a code point associated with the glyph. >> In a handwritten or printed document, communication uses the glyph alone, so >> there is not the same problem existing. >> >> >> > This is still true today: even if you define new glyphs, and as long as >> > you do not explicitly give permission to others to reused those glyphs or >> > variant of them, these glyphs remain private in terms of copyright >> > restrictions on their designs. >> >> Yes, you are right. I do hope that that is not going to be a problem over >> people trying out the glyphs that I have devised. I need to think about >> that. Feedback from readers on this issue is invited please. >> >> >> > Making your publication "public" by depositing to a national library is >> > not a situation where you grant an open licence to others : the legal >> > deposit made at a national library is instead used as a proof of your date >> > of work to claim your copyright on this work. >> >> Well, in the United Kingdom, copyright in a work exists from when the work >> is put into permanent form. >> >> The reason that I use the voluntary deposit facility of the British >> Library is so that there is a permanent archived record of what I produce >> for as long as the British Library exists. >> >> As I understand it, the deposit at the British Library is because the work >> has been published, or is on the point of being published and actually >> becomes published: the depositing at the British Library is not the >> publishing action. This is true, but anyway the act of publishing something is not by itself a proof of authorship and owning of copyrights, you need a formal registration, and this is the purpose of legal deposit (In UK may be, but certainly in France too, where it is required before someone can claim copyright on a published work). The Internet has changed a bit the sotuation, but theorically in France at least, websites must have an information info or link to a page expliaining the rights and copyrights attached, with the legal names and points of contact of the publisher which will act on behalf of the authors to reply to legal requests. in some countries, web hosting companies must also be able to legally act on behalf of publishers of websites (and some laws require maintining legal logs to help identifying the publishers of websites or any controbutor to a website). Web sites are usually not given a copy to a legal deposit library (but in some countries website publishers can do that if they wish, using electronic copies of their documents; this legal deposit is not necessarily free, and not always performed at a national public library, there may be legally approved trusted proxies, such as notarial offices, or national IP agencies). The main purpose of such deposit is to register a claim of copyright, at a proven date (to protect the work from competitive claims that would come later). The mere act of publishing something is generally not enough when copyright claims start being disputed in justice (because the publication act could have been illegal, and this illegal act not discovered before long by their legitime owners, or because the owners won't be able to find who perfomed the illegal publication) : this is even harder to prove when the first publication was made on the Internet only, as documents that are not electronically signed.
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
Whilst using the PUA is far from perfect at the end of the day it is better than the alternative of not using the PUA. Regards John On 10 Nov 2012 17:37, "William_J_G Overington" wrote: > On Thursday 8 November 2012, Philippe Verdy wrote: > > > 2012/11/8 William_J_G Overington> : > > > However, an encoding using a Private Use Area encoding has great > problems in being implemented as a widespread system. > > > Wrong, this is what has been made during centuries if not millenium ! > > Well, the point that I am trying to make is that a new glyph that is used > in an electronic communication system that uses the ISO/IEC 10646 character > encoding system with the new glyph being encoded using a Private Use Area > code point does, of necessity, have a code point associated with the glyph. > In a handwritten or printed document, communication uses the glyph alone, > so there is not the same problem existing. > > > This is still true today: even if you define new glyphs, and as long as > you do not explicitly give permission to others to reused those glyphs or > variant of them, these glyphs remain private in terms of copyright > restrictions on their designs. > > Yes, you are right. I do hope that that is not going to be a problem over > people trying out the glyphs that I have devised. I need to think about > that. Feedback from readers on this issue is invited please. > > > Making your publication "public" by depositing to a national library is > not a situation where you grant an open licence to others : the legal > deposit made at a national library is instead used as a proof of your date > of work to claim your copyright on this work. > > Well, in the United Kingdom, copyright in a work exists from when the work > is put into permanent form. > > The reason that I use the voluntary deposit facility of the British > Library is so that there is a permanent archived record of what I produce > for as long as the British Library exists. > > As I understand it, the deposit at the British Library is because the work > has been published, or is on the point of being published and actually > becomes published: the depositing at the British Library is not the > publishing action. > > > > Also, I feel that implementation other than for research purposes > using a Private Use Area encoding would cause problems for the future: I > feel that a formal encoding is needed from the start. > > > Certainly no. For widespread use you first need to create a work, claim > ownership of copyrights, makde a legal deposit to proove it, publish an > explicit open licence statement allowing reuse of your design by other > authors, and then make your own work for convincing others to reuse these > glyphs (or derived variants of them) in a way similar as yours. > > If one coins a new word into the English language (for example, I coined > the word telesoftware in 1974 for my then new broadcasting invention), the > word will only become included in the Oxford English Dictionary if it is > used to an assessed extent by people other than the coiner. That is fine, > because the word stands on its own and the spelling of the word that is put > into the dictionary is the same spelling as the word that is in use. > > However, with a new symbol that is used by glyph and Private Use Area > encoding in interoperable situations, such as email exchanges, or > searchable documents and so on, if the character is encoded into Unicode > and ISO/IEC 10646 then the glyph is encoded yet the code point is changed. > There are then issues of legacy data. > > > It is when there will be similar reuses by others, in their own > publications, and when people will start communicating with them in a > sizeable community, on a long enough period (more than the year of your > initial publication), that the appearing "abstract" character will be saif > existant (Unicode or ISO won't consider these characters as long as others > than you alone are not using these designs legally in their published > interchanges, printed or not, have not been proven to exist over a period > consisting in more than 1 year by much more than just 1 independant author). > > Well, whether Unicode and ISO accept the characters for encoding is a > decision that they can make. However, in relation to considering them for > acceptance, I feel that it would be fair and reasonable for there to be a > facility that allows me the opportunity to place a document before the > committees making the case for encoding without there being widespread > existing usage using a Private Use Area encoding, with the decision as to > whether to accept the encoding being made after reading the document and > after discussion. > > > > I feel that the rules for encoding such new symbols are out of date > and not suitable for present day use. > > > > Unfortunately, it seems that there is not a way available for me to > request formal consideration of the possibility of changing the rules. > > > > Technology has
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
On Thursday 8 November 2012, Philippe Verdy wrote: > 2012/11/8 William_J_G Overington> : > > However, an encoding using a Private Use Area encoding has great problems > > in being implemented as a widespread system. > Wrong, this is what has been made during centuries if not millenium ! Well, the point that I am trying to make is that a new glyph that is used in an electronic communication system that uses the ISO/IEC 10646 character encoding system with the new glyph being encoded using a Private Use Area code point does, of necessity, have a code point associated with the glyph. In a handwritten or printed document, communication uses the glyph alone, so there is not the same problem existing. > This is still true today: even if you define new glyphs, and as long as you > do not explicitly give permission to others to reused those glyphs or variant > of them, these glyphs remain private in terms of copyright restrictions on > their designs. Yes, you are right. I do hope that that is not going to be a problem over people trying out the glyphs that I have devised. I need to think about that. Feedback from readers on this issue is invited please. > Making your publication "public" by depositing to a national library is not a > situation where you grant an open licence to others : the legal deposit made > at a national library is instead used as a proof of your date of work to > claim your copyright on this work. Well, in the United Kingdom, copyright in a work exists from when the work is put into permanent form. The reason that I use the voluntary deposit facility of the British Library is so that there is a permanent archived record of what I produce for as long as the British Library exists. As I understand it, the deposit at the British Library is because the work has been published, or is on the point of being published and actually becomes published: the depositing at the British Library is not the publishing action. > > Also, I feel that implementation other than for research purposes using a > > Private Use Area encoding would cause problems for the future: I feel that > > a formal encoding is needed from the start. > Certainly no. For widespread use you first need to create a work, claim > ownership of copyrights, makde a legal deposit to proove it, publish an > explicit open licence statement allowing reuse of your design by other > authors, and then make your own work for convincing others to reuse these > glyphs (or derived variants of them) in a way similar as yours. If one coins a new word into the English language (for example, I coined the word telesoftware in 1974 for my then new broadcasting invention), the word will only become included in the Oxford English Dictionary if it is used to an assessed extent by people other than the coiner. That is fine, because the word stands on its own and the spelling of the word that is put into the dictionary is the same spelling as the word that is in use. However, with a new symbol that is used by glyph and Private Use Area encoding in interoperable situations, such as email exchanges, or searchable documents and so on, if the character is encoded into Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 then the glyph is encoded yet the code point is changed. There are then issues of legacy data. > It is when there will be similar reuses by others, in their own publications, > and when people will start communicating with them in a sizeable community, > on a long enough period (more than the year of your initial publication), > that the appearing "abstract" character will be saif existant (Unicode or ISO > won't consider these characters as long as others than you alone are not > using these designs legally in their published interchanges, printed or not, > have not been proven to exist over a period consisting in more than 1 year by > much more than just 1 independant author). Well, whether Unicode and ISO accept the characters for encoding is a decision that they can make. However, in relation to considering them for acceptance, I feel that it would be fair and reasonable for there to be a facility that allows me the opportunity to place a document before the committees making the case for encoding without there being widespread existing usage using a Private Use Area encoding, with the decision as to whether to accept the encoding being made after reading the document and after discussion. > > I feel that the rules for encoding such new symbols are out of date and not > > suitable for present day use. > > Unfortunately, it seems that there is not a way available for me to request > > formal consideration of the possibility of changing the rules. > > Technology has changed since the rules were made. > May be, but this just extended the number of technical medias useable for > publications (even if copyright issues have been restricting a bit the legal > reuses more tightly). There are s
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
On 11/9/2012 7:14 PM, Philippe Verdy wrote: 2012/11/9 Asmus Freytag : Actually, there are certain instances where characters are encoded based on expected usage. Currency symbols are a well known case for that, but there have been instances of phonetic characters encoded in order to facilitate creation and publication of certain databases for specialists, without burdening them with instant obsolescence (if they had used PUA characters). But work is still being performed to implement the characters ans start using it massively, even if it's not encoded. I think this entire line of discussion is rather drifting into irrelevant details. Yes, I agree that it should matter whether serious resources have been committed in support of a new symbol or new piece of notation. That forms part of the evidence that marks some of these exceptional cases as viable standardized characters - despite lack of prior, widespread use. That, somehow, was my point. However, I find it pointless to speculate about the details. Exceptions are exceptions, and the most important issue is to reserve the flexibility to deal with them, when they arise. After they have arisen, they are best dealt with on a case-by-case basis (or in the case of currency symbols, we now have an entire category for which there is consensus hat it merits exceptional treatment). A./
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
2012/11/9 Asmus Freytag : > Actually, there are certain instances where characters are encoded based on > expected usage. > Currency symbols are a well known case for that, but there have been > instances of phonetic characters encoded in order to facilitate creation and > publication of certain databases for specialists, without burdening them > with instant obsolescence (if they had used PUA characters). But work is still being performed to implement the characters ans start using it massively, even if it's not encoded. Currency symbols are among these : their design does NOT need an initial encoding as a character. This starts by a graphic design, using graphic tools. Then these tools are used to design and print banknotes and coins. Many documents will be preoduced to introduce the currency and its expected symbol. They will use graphic representations rather than plain text. Plain text however is expected to become an urgent need for currencies that are to become legal tender in an area as large as a country or group of countries, because currency units are used everyday, many times each day, by lots of people, even if they don't always need to create new documents with the symbol (in fact the first use will be to name the currency, the symbol will be preprinted in checkforms and on banknotes and coins, or on commercial advertizing documents that are never limited to plain text : plain text is certainly not the best support media for their announcements). > > If an important publisher of mathematical works (or publisher of important > mathematical works) made a case for adding a recently created symbol so that > they can go ahead an make it part of their standard repertoire, I would > think it churlish to require them to create portability problems for their > users by first creating documents with PUA encoding). If the work is really important, if it because it has been the subject of serious researches for a long enough time, and publication for peer review. In scientific domains, most electronic publications are NOT made in plain-text, but using PDFs. For computing purposes, if there's a need to program the symbol, scientists are used to create specific notations in programming languages. This is not a limitation, as such programs actually don"t need the symbol themselves, except to render the result (but softwares are not limited to return results in plain text, so this is not a serious limitation). In other words, there's no chicken and eggs problem for scientific symbols: the usage starts expanding first, and at some time the symbol will be used by enough people that they MAY want it to be supported in plain-text (this won't always happen, notably for scientific documents where plain text is already a very poor medium which require specific conventions and notations that are extremely technical and not always very readable and usable in practice, except by machines, like programming code in computer languages). Computer languages anyway are not in scope of the UCS. Neither is the representation in mediums other than plain text (and notably not graphic file formats). In addition, the UCS is used in plain text to allow things that would NOT be permitted in the initial definition (and actual usage) of the symbol : transformations like changes of lettercase, sorting/collation (which may not make sense for the notation using the symbol itself, variability of glyphs, and even most character properties (the classification in Unicode will make asbolutely no sense in the scientific notation that certainly does not want this flexibility when the actual notation has its own very precise requirements to be meaningful in well-defined contexts). Encoding the symbol in the UCS would immediately permit reuse in other contexts than the initial one. It would be useful and acceptable in fact to encode it ONLY if there are such derivation of usages, outside of the initial scientific definition and context, by people that don't even need to know the original meaning of the symbol to reuse it in a 'fancy" way to mean soething else. If scientists see this usage being developped, where there's some unallowed variations, they will still prefer to maintain their own precise definition, which won't match the definition that will be encoded in the UCS for more general use (due to the "unification" process prior to encoding). In other words, for long the initial scientific commuity will continue to use its existing definition and conventions, its own stadnards, and the encoded character may create an ambiguity that does not exist in their initial convention. They will reject the result of the "unification" in the UCS and will still consider their symbol being different from the currently encoded one. At least for a long time until the general public starts recognizing that their unified use is acdtually differerent, and then a request is being performed by scientific people to desunify the scientific symbol from
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
On 11/08/2012 09:00 PM, Asmus Freytag wrote: On 11/8/2012 4:39 PM, Mark E. Shoulson wrote: I stand by it: we don't encode what would be cool to have. We encode what people *use*. Actually, there are certain instances where characters are encoded based on expected usage. ... What these examples have in common is that they reflect a small number of characters with an "instant" user community that's well defined and understood (and appropriate to the type of character). The main reason for the restriction to "encode what people use" is that characters cannot be retracted if the hoped for enthusiasm for them doesn't materialize. The other reason is that the Unicode Standard is a standard - what it encodes needs to be worthy of standardization. There are exceptional instances where "leading" standardization can be justified - they are few and far between, but they exist. As exceptions prove the rule - the majority of characters will continue to be cases where standardization follows demonstrated use. Well said; and I accept the correction to my position. It does happen, but not very often and not without good reason. ~mark
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
On 11/8/2012 4:39 PM, Mark E. Shoulson wrote: On 11/08/2012 01:48 AM, William_J_G Overington wrote: Michael Everson wrote: < ... collect examples of these in print ... Mark E. Shoulson wrote: We don't encode "it would be nice/useful." We encode *characters*, glyphs that people use (yes, I know I conflated glyphs and characters there.) ... Unicode isn't a system for encoding ratings. It's a system for encoding what people write and print. I have at various times, as research has progressed, deposited with the British Library pdf documents that I have produced and published and I have deposited with the British Library TrueType fonts that I have produced and published and I have received email receipts for them. Some of the pdf publications contain new symbols, used intermixed with text in a plain text situation. I have used Private Use Area encodings for the symbols. Yet the publications have not been published in hardcopy form. I think you may be taking me too literally. A PDF document which is essentially a proxy for a printed page (only cheaper to copy and produce) would count, to me, as usage "in print." I don't make the rules, but I think some of the Unicoders who do would agree. The charge of the rules being "out of date" because they demand usage is not an accurate one, and pointing to printing vs electronic usage is a red herring. I have long complained about another writing system which I felt had trouble being encoded due to chicken-and-egg issues (Klingon), but even so people have been using it in the PUA; see http://qurgh.blogspot.com/ (now defunct, apparently, but the site is still there), and the KLI's collection of Qo'noS QonoS is available in Latin letters or in pIqaD in PUA. I agree that there is something to the charge of chicken-and-egg issues with encoding writing systems (you can't write it until it's encoded, you can't encode it until it's written), but probably more with the amount of usage that has to be seen, not with the requirement that there be SOME usage. I stand by it: we don't encode what would be cool to have. We encode what people *use*. Actually, there are certain instances where characters are encoded based on expected usage. Currency symbols are a well known case for that, but there have been instances of phonetic characters encoded in order to facilitate creation and publication of certain databases for specialists, without burdening them with instant obsolescence (if they had used PUA characters). If an important publisher of mathematical works (or publisher of important mathematical works) made a case for adding a recently created symbol so that they can go ahead an make it part of their standard repertoire, I would think it churlish to require them to create portability problems for their users by first creating documents with PUA encoding). What these examples have in common is that they reflect a small number of characters with an "instant" user community that's well defined and understood (and appropriate to the type of character). The main reason for the restriction to "encode what people use" is that characters cannot be retracted if the hoped for enthusiasm for them doesn't materialize. The other reason is that the Unicode Standard is a standard - what it encodes needs to be worthy of standardization. There are exceptional instances where "leading" standardization can be justified - they are few and far between, but they exist. As exceptions prove the rule - the majority of characters will continue to be cases where standardization follows demonstrated use. A./
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
On 11/08/2012 01:48 AM, William_J_G Overington wrote: Michael Everson wrote: < ... collect examples of these in print ... Mark E. Shoulson wrote: We don't encode "it would be nice/useful." We encode *characters*, glyphs that people use (yes, I know I conflated glyphs and characters there.) ... Unicode isn't a system for encoding ratings. It's a system for encoding what people write and print. I have at various times, as research has progressed, deposited with the British Library pdf documents that I have produced and published and I have deposited with the British Library TrueType fonts that I have produced and published and I have received email receipts for them. Some of the pdf publications contain new symbols, used intermixed with text in a plain text situation. I have used Private Use Area encodings for the symbols. Yet the publications have not been published in hardcopy form. I think you may be taking me too literally. A PDF document which is essentially a proxy for a printed page (only cheaper to copy and produce) would count, to me, as usage "in print." I don't make the rules, but I think some of the Unicoders who do would agree. The charge of the rules being "out of date" because they demand usage is not an accurate one, and pointing to printing vs electronic usage is a red herring. I have long complained about another writing system which I felt had trouble being encoded due to chicken-and-egg issues (Klingon), but even so people have been using it in the PUA; see http://qurgh.blogspot.com/ (now defunct, apparently, but the site is still there), and the KLI's collection of Qo'noS QonoS is available in Latin letters or in pIqaD in PUA. I agree that there is something to the charge of chicken-and-egg issues with encoding writing systems (you can't write it until it's encoded, you can't encode it until it's written), but probably more with the amount of usage that has to be seen, not with the requirement that there be SOME usage. I stand by it: we don't encode what would be cool to have. We encode what people *use*. ~mark
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
I'm not sure I follow this analysis. A./ On 11/8/2012 1:30 AM, Philippe Verdy wrote: 2012/11/8 William_J_G Overington : However, an encoding using a Private Use Area encoding has great problems in being implemented as a widespread system. Wrong, this is what has been made during centuries if not millenium ! Initially a private use definition, which was not "encoded", but found their way in widespread use once they were adopted by other editors (possibly by using glyph variants, including those also introduced by the initial author depending on the publisher he used and the amount paid for the publication. This is still true today: even if you define new glyphs, and as long as you do not explicitly give permission to others to reused those glyphs or variant of them, these glyphs remain private in terms of copyright restrictions on their designs. Making your publication "public" by depositing to a national library is not a situation where you grant an open licence to others : the legal deposit made at a national library is instead used as a proof of your date of work to claim your copyright on this work. Also, I feel that implementation other than for research purposes using a Private Use Area encoding would cause problems for the future: I feel that a formal encoding is needed from the start. Certainly no. For widespread use you first need to create a work, claim ownership of copyrights, makde a legal deposit to proove it, publish an explicit open licence statement allowing reuse of your design by other authors, and then make your own work for convincing others to reuse these glyphs (or derived variants of them) in a way similar as yours. It is when there will be similar reuses by others, in their own publications, and when people will start communicating with them in a sizeable community, on a long enough period (more than the year of your initial publication), that the appearing "abstract" character will be saif existant (Unicode or ISO won't consider these characters as long as others than you alone are not using these designs legally in their published interchanges, printed or not, have not been proven to exist over a period consisting in more than 1 year by much more than just 1 independant author). I feel that the rules for encoding such new symbols are out of date and not suitable for present day use. Unfortunately, it seems that there is not a way available for me to request formal consideration of the possibility of changing the rules. Technology has changed since the rules were made. May be, but this just extended the number of technical medias useable for publications (even if copyright issues have been restricting a bit the legal reuses more tightly). There are still lots of documents produced on various medias (at least all the same since milleniums). Electronic documents are just newer medias for publications, but they certainly don't create a new restriction to permit widespread use. Also as the world population has grown a lot, the minimum size of the community needed to demonstrate its existence has grown proportionally (the requirements are larger for more recent documents, compared to historic characters, whose community of users has however grown with ages, because we can also include the new reusers of the historic documents over the much larger period where these characters have not been forgotten, allowing more documents to reuse them up to documents produced today). Is it possible for formal consideration to be given to the possibility of changing the rules please? Not the way you describe. You are trying to put the egg before the chicken. But you forget that both the chiken and egg have a common creator and are in fact exactly the same thing. So even if yo uare still required to use private encoding, this is not what is limiting the birth of an abstract character from your glyphs. What is important is the number of documents reuing them, over a long enough period, by a community of authors legally recognized (either because they are dead since long enough htat their work have fallen in the public domain, allowing a significant increase of the number of reusers, or because the exclusive copyright claims have been relaxed by an open licence so that other will be allowed to reuse your design or variants of them in their publications, on various medias, not just electronic ones).
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
One key criteris for inclusion in Unicode is that a character or symbol be in circulation. Whether these are hand written, printed or electronic. If one creates a new a new character then one first must get others to use it, this takes time. John On 8 Nov 2012 14:57, "William_J_G Overington" wrote: > Michael Everson wrote: > > < ... collect examples of these in print ... > > Mark E. Shoulson wrote: > > > We don't encode "it would be nice/useful." We encode *characters*, > glyphs that people use (yes, I know I conflated glyphs and characters > there.) > ... > > Unicode isn't a system for encoding ratings. It's a system for encoding > what people write and print. > > An interesting situation is that the British Library collects pure > electronic publications by a system of voluntary deposit. A publisher sends > an email to a specified email address with the pure electronic publication > or publications attached to the email. The British Library sends, upon > request, an email receipt for such deposited items. > > http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/legaldep/index.html > > I have at various times, as research has progressed, deposited with the > British Library pdf documents that I have produced and published and I have > deposited with the British Library TrueType fonts that I have produced and > published and I have received email receipts for them. > > Some of the pdf publications contain new symbols, used intermixed with > text in a plain text situation. I have used Private Use Area encodings for > the symbols. > > Yet the publications have not been published in hardcopy form. > > A problem that exists with the ISO/IEC 10646 encoding process, in my > opinion, is that there is not a way for new symbols for electronic > communication systems to be considered for encoding unless there is already > widespread use of them using a Private Use Area encoding. > > However, an encoding using a Private Use Area encoding has great problems > in being implemented as a widespread system. > > Also, I feel that implementation other than for research purposes using a > Private Use Area encoding would cause problems for the future: I feel that > a formal encoding is needed from the start. > > I feel that the rules for encoding such new symbols are out of date and > not suitable for present day use. > > Unfortunately, it seems that there is not a way available for me to > request formal consideration of the possibility of changing the rules. > > Technology has changed since the rules were made. > > Is it possible for formal consideration to be given to the possibility of > changing the rules please? > > William Overington > > 8 November 2012 > > > > > > > > > > >
Re: The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
2012/11/8 William_J_G Overington : > However, an encoding using a Private Use Area encoding has great problems in > being implemented as a widespread system. Wrong, this is what has been made during centuries if not millenium ! Initially a private use definition, which was not "encoded", but found their way in widespread use once they were adopted by other editors (possibly by using glyph variants, including those also introduced by the initial author depending on the publisher he used and the amount paid for the publication. This is still true today: even if you define new glyphs, and as long as you do not explicitly give permission to others to reused those glyphs or variant of them, these glyphs remain private in terms of copyright restrictions on their designs. Making your publication "public" by depositing to a national library is not a situation where you grant an open licence to others : the legal deposit made at a national library is instead used as a proof of your date of work to claim your copyright on this work. > Also, I feel that implementation other than for research purposes using a > Private Use Area encoding would cause problems for the future: I feel that a > formal encoding is needed from the start. Certainly no. For widespread use you first need to create a work, claim ownership of copyrights, makde a legal deposit to proove it, publish an explicit open licence statement allowing reuse of your design by other authors, and then make your own work for convincing others to reuse these glyphs (or derived variants of them) in a way similar as yours. It is when there will be similar reuses by others, in their own publications, and when people will start communicating with them in a sizeable community, on a long enough period (more than the year of your initial publication), that the appearing "abstract" character will be saif existant (Unicode or ISO won't consider these characters as long as others than you alone are not using these designs legally in their published interchanges, printed or not, have not been proven to exist over a period consisting in more than 1 year by much more than just 1 independant author). > I feel that the rules for encoding such new symbols are out of date and not > suitable for present day use. > > Unfortunately, it seems that there is not a way available for me to request > formal consideration of the possibility of changing the rules. > Technology has changed since the rules were made. May be, but this just extended the number of technical medias useable for publications (even if copyright issues have been restricting a bit the legal reuses more tightly). There are still lots of documents produced on various medias (at least all the same since milleniums). Electronic documents are just newer medias for publications, but they certainly don't create a new restriction to permit widespread use. Also as the world population has grown a lot, the minimum size of the community needed to demonstrate its existence has grown proportionally (the requirements are larger for more recent documents, compared to historic characters, whose community of users has however grown with ages, because we can also include the new reusers of the historic documents over the much larger period where these characters have not been forgotten, allowing more documents to reuse them up to documents produced today). > Is it possible for formal consideration to be given to the possibility of > changing the rules please? Not the way you describe. You are trying to put the egg before the chicken. But you forget that both the chiken and egg have a common creator and are in fact exactly the same thing. So even if yo uare still required to use private encoding, this is not what is limiting the birth of an abstract character from your glyphs. What is important is the number of documents reuing them, over a long enough period, by a community of authors legally recognized (either because they are dead since long enough htat their work have fallen in the public domain, allowing a significant increase of the number of reusers, or because the exclusive copyright claims have been relaxed by an open licence so that other will be allowed to reuse your design or variants of them in their publications, on various medias, not just electronic ones).
The rules of encoding (from Re: Missing geometric shapes)
Michael Everson wrote: < ... collect examples of these in print ... Mark E. Shoulson wrote: > We don't encode "it would be nice/useful." We encode *characters*, glyphs > that people use (yes, I know I conflated glyphs and characters there.) ... > Unicode isn't a system for encoding ratings. It's a system for encoding what > people write and print. An interesting situation is that the British Library collects pure electronic publications by a system of voluntary deposit. A publisher sends an email to a specified email address with the pure electronic publication or publications attached to the email. The British Library sends, upon request, an email receipt for such deposited items. http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/legaldep/index.html I have at various times, as research has progressed, deposited with the British Library pdf documents that I have produced and published and I have deposited with the British Library TrueType fonts that I have produced and published and I have received email receipts for them. Some of the pdf publications contain new symbols, used intermixed with text in a plain text situation. I have used Private Use Area encodings for the symbols. Yet the publications have not been published in hardcopy form. A problem that exists with the ISO/IEC 10646 encoding process, in my opinion, is that there is not a way for new symbols for electronic communication systems to be considered for encoding unless there is already widespread use of them using a Private Use Area encoding. However, an encoding using a Private Use Area encoding has great problems in being implemented as a widespread system. Also, I feel that implementation other than for research purposes using a Private Use Area encoding would cause problems for the future: I feel that a formal encoding is needed from the start. I feel that the rules for encoding such new symbols are out of date and not suitable for present day use. Unfortunately, it seems that there is not a way available for me to request formal consideration of the possibility of changing the rules. Technology has changed since the rules were made. Is it possible for formal consideration to be given to the possibility of changing the rules please? William Overington 8 November 2012
