On Thursday, May 20, 2004 10:45 PM, John Hudson wrote: Subject: Re: Response to Everson Phoenician and why June 7? > It > must seem pretty obvious to engineers that this is a standard for encoding characters and > that implementing support for the standard does not, per se, imply much of anything about > how users should encode text. This is perhaps less obvious to non-engineers -- i.e. to > users --, and understandably so given the typical representation of Unicode to this > audience: 'Now supports all the world's major living languages!'. It is evident from the > Phoenician discussion that a good number of people -- intelligent people, and experts in > particular fields -- expect UTC decisions on what characters to encode to influence user > decisions on how to encode specific texts. I don't think this expectation is unreasonable, > given their perception of the standard, and perhaps Unicode needs to do a better job in > conveying what the standard is and does and how it can be used.
With all due respect, this is disingenuous. It's like saying that building a highway does not, per se, imply much of anything about how housing development will take place. Perhaps true in a strictly literal sense, but laughable in the real world. What are users supposed to do? Ignore the Unicode support implemented in commercial software and develop their own encoding tools? Ignore Unicode and develop an interchange standard that meets their needs? Unicode decisions have far-reaching consequences. Don't minimize the responsibilities that come with power. Ted Ted Hopp, Ph.D. ZigZag, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1-301-990-7453 newSLATE is your personal learning workspace ...on the web at http://www.newSLATE.com/
