Patrick Andries wrote as follows. > [PA] I believe the need of an encoding may be pragmatically ascertained, I don't known about the « real linguistic value » of an alphabet. I have, by the way, no problem if someone says : « Sorry, too idiosyncratic and excentric ! Use the private user area if you need such characters. » This may well be the case.
I suggest that a good idea would be for you to produce a list of which characters you would like and encode them as a Private Use Area encoding and publish the list. That would bring the possibility of being able to use the characters in a Unicode compatible environment one step closer. If they are one day promoted to regular Unicode then fine, otherwise there would nevertheless be a consistent encoding available for anyone who chooses to use it, which would help in interoperability. If you choose to encode them in the Private Use Area, it is entirely up to you which code points you specify within the range U+E000 through to U+F8FF. However, you might like to take into account the code ranges already being used by various fonts which use the Private Use Area as avoiding a clash might increase the chances of the characters becoming added into established fonts such as Code2000, Gentium and Junicode, as well as being added into fonts designed specifically for older French texts. If a set of code point allocations is widely available, then the chances for implementation itself and implementation in an interoperable manner are increased. I am wondering whether the range from U+F200 through to U+F2FF is being used by anyone for anything. So perhaps, if you choose to encode the rare extinct latin letters in the Private Use Area, if anyone who reads this knows of whether U+F200 through to U+F2FF is being used by anyone for anything perhaps he or she might draw attention to the fact in this forum please. William Overington 2 June 2003
