William Overington wrote on 06/26/2003 07:03:12 AM: > yet I am suggesting that where a > few characters added into an established block are accepted, which is what > is claimed for these characters, there should be a faster route than having > to wait for bulk release in Unicode 4.1.
Once both UTC and WG2 have approved the assignment of characters to particular codepoints, I might risk making fonts using those codepoints for those characters, as it's not very likely the codepoints will be changed at that point. There's no guarantee that would not happen, however, so I certainly wouldn't distribute such fonts if I were a commercial foundary -- too much at stake. If an ammendment to ISO 10646 gets published prior to a new version of Unicode, though, that would constitute a guarantee the codepoints will not change. > If these characters have been > accepted, why not formally warrant their use now by having Unicode 4.001 > and then having Unicode 4.002 when a few more are accepted? That is not how versioning is done with the standard. Please read http://www.unicode.org/standard/versions/ > Some fontmakers can react to new > releases more quickly than can some other fontmakers, so why should progress > be slowed down for the benefit of those who cannot add new glyphs into fonts > quickly? Fontmakers don't need to wait until a new version is published before they start preparing fonts. > For example, symbols for audio description, subtitles and signing are needed > for broadcasting. Will that need to have years of waiting and using the > Private Use Area when it could be a fairly swift process and the characters > could be implemented into read-only memories in interactive television sets > that much sooner? Well, if the characters haven't even been proposed for addition to the standard, then yes, it will take years of PUA usage. > Why is it that it is regarded by the Unicode Consortium > as reasonable that it takes years to get a character through the committees > and into use? Because there is a process that takes time. International standards aren't created by a few people working out of their garage. Some international standards take far longer than do updates to Unicode. > Surely where a few characters are needed the Unicode > Consortium and ISO need to take a twenty-first century attitude to getting > the job done It might be a good idea to become more familiar with the actual process and work on international standards in general before criticizing the people doing the work. There are a number of people working quite hard on this stuff, with their time being volunteered by the organizations and companies they represent, or from their own personal time. - Peter --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Constable Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA Tel: +1 972 708 7485
