From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
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Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:39:56 -0700
Message-ID: <6e35c0620907261139u610c0431rbc3ecff6b16def29@mail.gmail.com>
From: Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] Woes of New Language Support
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 2e1e383e-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

If I'm reading you right, you're saying it might be easier if
everything were encoded as combining (or maybe more aptly
non-combining) codes, regardless of language?

So, we might encode 'Waffles' as w+upper a f f l e s and let the
renderer (if there is one) handle the presentation of the case shift
and the potential ligature, but things like grep get noticeably easier
with no overlap of =F5 and o+umlaut.

Again, oversimplified, with no real understanding on my part of the
depth or breadth of the problem space.

If this is the case, could it be handled by pushing everything into a
subset of unicode rather than use the unallocated space to create a
superset?

-J

On 7/26/09, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>> to be fair to the unicode people, this decoupling of glyphs and codepoin=
ts
>> is (i think) the most straightforward way to implement some languages li=
ke
>> arabic, where the glyphs for characters depend on their position within =
a
>> word.  that is, a letter at the beginning of a word looks different from
>> what it would look like if it was in the middle.
>
> my opinion (not that i'm entitled to one here) is
> that the unicode guys screwed up.  unicode is not
> consistant.  explain why there are two code points sigma.
> 03c3	greek small letter sigma
> 03c2	greek small letter final sigma
> why does german get =E4, =F6, =FC?  if you want to take
> this further, why are there capital forms of latin letters?
> can't that also be inferred by the font?
>
> what's called a ligature in one language is a character
> in another.  i see no consistency.  it seems like the
> unicode committee had a problem with too much
> knowledge of the specific problems and few actual
> unifying (sorry) concepts.
>
> i think it would make much more sense to put this logic
> in editors.  this would also allow the freedom to use a
> capital, ligature, final form in the wrong place.
> like say studlyCaps.  i can't imagine english is the only
> language in the world that gets abused.
>
> - erik
>
>

--=20
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