On Saturday 10 November 2012, John Knightley <john.knight...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Whilst using the PUA is far from perfect at the end of the day it is better
> than the alternative of not using the PUA.
Yes. The Private Use Area is a very useful facility in that it allows
characters of one's own designation to be added to a personally made font as
one wishes. One can with many software applications then use the font and the
characters much as one can use a commercial font that has just regular Unicode
characters.
Here are links to some forum posts where I have used Private Use Area
characters in various circumstances.
http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=9655#p9655
http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=16813#p16813
http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=16746#p16746
http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=16264#p16264
http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=17499#p17499
http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=17556#p17556
A feature of using the Private Use Area is that code point allocations are made
by a person or entity that is not a standards organization. Also, Private Use
Area code point assignments are not unique.
In many cases, neither of those features presents a problem for successful use
of a Private Use Area encoding.
However, although one can often not be concerned with the fact that the code
point assignment is not unique, the fact that it is not made by a standards
organization is a big problem if one is seeking to have a system that one has
invented taken up by people and companies generally.
For one of my present uses of the Private Use Area I am seeking to have a
system that I have invented taken up by people and companies generally.
However, I feel that there is no chance of a system that I have invented being
taken up by people and companies generally using a Private Use Area encoding.
Thus, I feel that I will not be able to present an encoding proposal document
showing existing widespread usa.
However, if the Unicode Technical Committee and the ISO Committee were to agree
to the principle of encoding my inventions in plane 13, not necessarily using
the particular items or symbols that I am at present using in my research, yet
the committees working out how to form a committee or subcommittee to work out
what to encode, then I feel that a group project with lots of people
contributing ideas could produce a wonderful system encoded into plane 13 that
could be of great usefulness to many people.
My present goal is to have the opportunity to write a document requesting that
agreement in principle and for the document to be considered and discussed by
the committees and a formal decision made.
William Overington
12 November 2012
