I apologize to the list for having contributed to this thread to the
point where it has come to this, again.
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA
http://www.ewellic.org | @DougEwell
-----Original Message-----
From: William_J_G Overington
Sent: Saturday, June 2, 2012 0:47
To: unicode@unicode.org ; Doug Ewell ; Asmus Freytag ;
verd...@wanadoo.fr
Cc: wjgo_10...@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: Tags and future new technologies (from RE: Flag tags (was:
Re: Unicode 6.2 to Support the Turkish Lira Sign))
On Friday 1 June 2012, Asmus Freytag <asm...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
All of these things remain solutions in search of a problem.
Well, my research would assist in providing communication through the
language barrier for such tasks as seeking information about relatives
and friends after a disaster.
Simulations have been produced for that and for seeking a meal with no
gluten-containing ingredients in it when in a foreign country.
Also for automated localization of signs in art galleries.
The interesting thing I note is the level of enthusiasm with which
these are discussed here, when, at the same time, a lowly single
character currency symbol, with no special meta-coding, layout
support, algorithm changes, etc. was so roundly dismissed - despite
all the evidence that not supporting it in face of user demands would
impact the ability of implementers to sell into a not insubstantial
market.
Well, not by me. I supported the encoding of the Indian Rupee Symbol to
be promptly done so that it was ready to be used within the six-month
time scale that was set for introducing the symbol into use.
Sometimes I wonder what's going on ...
Indeed. There are possibilities for great progress to be made with what
can be done using a stream of plain text characters and yet the rules
for encoding seem to prevent them even being considered.
There is a paradox in that, at present, in order for a new electronic
character-based communication technology to become introduced into
regular Unicode that evidence of its existing widespread use in a
Private Use Area context is needed: yet producing that existing
widespread use in a Private Use Area context is both unrealistic because
it would be a Private Use Area implementation and also that very
supposed Private Use Area implementation would damage the implementation
and use of a regular Unicode solution for many years.
The point is that such new technologies need to be introduced in a
process that is managed by Unicode and ISO Committees. For Unicode, the
code points could be encoded by the Unicode Technical Committee yet the
individual encodings using those code points could be carried out by
another Unicode Committee, which particular committee being a matter to
be decided.
William Overington
2 June 2012
