I am wondering if the following idea would be of any usefulness towards solving
the problem without needing any code point allocations in Unicode.
Suppose that a concept of an Endangered Language Code Page is invented.
Suppose that the letter sequence ELCP is used to designate an endangered
language code page number, the number being an integer.
Given a list of Endangered Languages, then by discussion amongst interested
people, allocate an ELCP number for each language, the number for a particular
language being different from the number for every other language and different
from ordinary code page numbers being used for existing code page numbers.
When making a font, include in the Description section of the Microsoft Roman
platform the following text, shown by an example for some language for which an
ELCP value of 4003 has been allocated.
ELCP=4003;
The ELCP value could be included in the Description section of the Microsoft
Unicode BMP only platform as well if so desired, as being useful for humans.
However, the reason that I have suggested using the Description section of the
Microsoft Roman platform is that the information in the Description section of
the Microsoft Roman platform is stored in plain text and so the ELCP value can
be found by opening the font file using the WordPad program and first searching
for ELCP within the file. Perhaps some way could be found to access and apply
that information automatically in some future software applications.
I hope that this helps in some way. Maybe someone reading this post will be
able to suggest a way of applying the idea of an ELCP in a software application
such as a wordprocessor package.
William Overington
19 August 2011
