On Saturday, March 16, 2002, at 03:45 , <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > : > I confess I enjoyed this thread of whether Tengwar should be > include > : > in Unicode. It's fun. It's cute. But isn't this too much for > those > : > who accepted the compromise for UNIcode? Tengwar should wait till > more > : > critical issues are resolved. Many (including me ) would be pissed > if > : > Tengwar be added BEFORE Ciao-Ciao's poetries and Man-Yo-Shu become > : > encodable in Unicode. > : > : Why should a great Western author have to wait on a great Eastern > author? > > My reaction exactly: why author A's special characters (*) would be > more special than author B's special characters? Surely without > dragging this even to the usual "East versus West" debate, that sounds > wrong. > > (*) Characters created by the author as a part of the creative process.
Thanks for polishing my points but the example I've picked includes no special characters -- at least back when they are published. It is more like "why author A's special characters would be more special than classical characters". Well, I can even give up on classical writings (after all my knowledge on classical writings, East or West, is too limited to discuss in depth). But it strikes me to face the fact that some of you can't even spell your name in Unicode. For instance, there are at least 31 (official) way to spell 'Wata' of Watanabe, a very popular Japanse family name. Only a couple of which is in JIS0208-1990, one of many charsets Unicode based upon. Well, in this particular case the blame should go to the Japanese government for being so inconsistent on industrial standards (which decides which Kanji be mapped to what codeset) and judicial standards (which determines whether a given Kanji be allowed in legal document). But here is the situation. There are so many Watanabe-sans, Saito-san, and others whose name cannot be spelled in Unicode. IMHO, Unicode Consotium should make these people happy before Tolkien fans and Trekkies. Dan the Man whose Name was Compromised by the Japanese government (*) (*) My parents wanted me to name me 彈 (U+5F48), a classical form, but it was not listed on "the table of Kanjis allowed for names" so I was named 弾 (U+5F3E).
