William, It looks like if you really want multilingual support that you need to run your text through a layout engine. If that is the case then you can remap certain characters or character combinations into the U+FDD0 to U+FDEF Unicode range and use this special non-character area for what ever purpose the font and layout engine needs.
If the private area becomes standardized then it is no longer a private area. Carl > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > Behalf Of William Overington > Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2001 9:00 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Special Type Sorts Tray 2001 (derives from Egyptian > Transliteration Characters) > > > In a recent thread entitled Egyptian Transliteration Characters, a request > was made for various characters including the following. > > LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H WITH LINE BELOW > LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH LINE BELOW > > There was also a suggestion from a participant in the thread for > a character > HYPHEN WITH DIARESIS for use in preparing a vocabulary list in German. > > I have been thinking recently that it would be useful to have presentation > forms for a ct ligature character and various long s ligatures so that one > may transcribe printed works from the 18th century into unicode while > keeping the typographic style intact. > > There is already U+017F LATIN SMALL LETTER LONG S and U+FB05 LATIN SMALL > LIGATURE LONG S T in regular unicode. > > I am thinking of such characters as LATIN SMALL LIGATURE LONG S LONG S and > LATIN SMALL LIGATURE LONG S L and LATIN SMALL LIGATURE LONG S B and so on. > There are perhaps about a dozen long s ligatures that could usefully be > encoded. > > In view of these various situations and possibly various others > that people > might like to post into this thread, I write to put forward the suggestion > that as a discussion on this list various users of the unicode > specification might like to agree informally a collection of characters > called Special Type Sorts Tray 2001 or STST2001 to be defined in > the Private > Use Area in, say, the range U+E700 through to U+E7FF in the hope that > perhaps by there being some informal agreement perhaps someone with a font > generating package might like to add them into a font and maybe various > small yet significant benefits to the facilities available for > encoding text > might be achieved. > > Maybe someday some of the characters might be promoted to become regular > unicode characters by the Unicode Consortium, maybe not. I feel > that it is > better to have available soon rather than not to have available some > informal list with some level of agreement amongst users, even if > only tacit > agreement, so that it is possible to use unicode to encode the various > characters for the various purposes. > > Please know that I am specifically suggesting that this be a discussion > amongst the user community: I am not suggesting that the Unicode > Consortium > endorse this suggestion as I am fully aware that the rules for the use of > the Private Use Area specifically say that no assignment to a > particular set > of characters will ever be endorsed by the Unicode Consortium. So, whilst > recognizing that that statement in the specification may not preclude the > Unicode Consortium from saying that some particular usage of the > Private Use > Area is wrong in some way, the absence of any encouragement from > the Unicode > Consortium over the definition of Special Type Sorts Tray 2001 > should not be > seen as in any way an objection to it being defined. > > I declare an interest in the choice of U+E700 to U+E7FF as the range for > STST2001 in that I have been defining and publishing, as part of my > research, designations for a number of characters in the Private Use Area > for a specific application area, namely for use in Java > programming for the > DVB-MHP (Digital Video Broadcasting - Multimedia Home Platform) system and > this particular range does not conflict with the codes that I am using in > that project, so the choice of U+E700 to U+E7FF as the range would be > particularly convenient to me. If anyone is interested to see those > definitions then they are in the DVB-MHP section of > http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo which is our family webspace in > England. There are references in various of the documents, namely the > Contemporary introduction, the document about Sequential text files and > their applications and in the second and third documents about > the Astrolabe > Channel numerical pointer. > > It is hard to even guess how many characters there are that people might > like to suggest for STST2001 and maybe there will be only a few and sorts > can be added gradually over a number of years, or maybe the tray will be > filled up quickly and starting another tray will need to be considered. > Hopefully STST2001 will be a useful facility and then when someone chooses > to put forward a suggestion for a character to be available then sometimes > adding it to STST2001 will be a suitable solution. A solution > that someone > suggesting a character should allow eight days for discussion and then if > the suggestion does not conflict with an existing definition and no good > reason has been put forward as to why the suggestion should not > be included > then the suggestion becomes included in STST2001 would perhaps be > suitable. > A good reason might be that, unknown to the person making the suggestion, > that the character sort is already defined in regular unicode. > > I feel that a special type sorts tray within the Private Use Area agreed > informally by people within the user community would be a very useful > facility. > > William Overington > > 30 september 2001 > > > > > > >