Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!mintaka!ogicse!plains!kkim From: kkim@plains.NoDak.edu (kyongsok kim) Newsgroups: comp.std.internat Subject: Re: Unicode vs ISO DIS 10646 (was universality of Latin-1) Message-ID: <10201@plains.NoDak.edu> Date: 5 May 91 16:09:14 GMT Article-I.D.: plains.10201 Organization: North Dakota State University Fargo, ND Lines: 45 In article enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) writes: :Now, ISO DIS 10646 is of the "insist on all combinations" persuasion, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Is it explicityly specified in any document or just an implicitly accepted principle? :but has non-spacing characters for languages in which the "separate :unit of information" is eminently the case (e.g. Hebrew). I've come :to learn that this is overly restrictive in many, many cases. ^^^^^^^^^^^ Could you please explain this in more detail? I am a little bit confused. Do you mean than "insisting on all combinations" is too restrictive and therefore somewhat unreasonable for some languages? Or somehting else? -------------------------------------------- I will give one example showing the "all combinations" principle is not applicable in at least one case. In case of Ancient Hangul, nobody knows exactly what combinations of characters (i.e., syllables) were used in the past, although component letters (or characters) of the syllables are completely known. Every time a scholar finds a new syllable, does he/she have to report it to a national standards body, which will again report it to ISO? The scholar may not be able to represent and send that character until the national standards body modifies its standard and then ISO modifies 10646. How long will it take? If ISO simply drops the "all combinations" principle (as with Hebrew), the whole problem can be solved immediately. (The solution is already known!) I am still wondering whether Hebrew is the only script in 10646 not honoring the ISO's "all combinations" principle. I tried to figure it out but no luck yet. There seem several scripts such as Devanagari and several scripts used in India, Arabic and its several variants, Thai, Laos, etc. which will have similar properties. :[Erik Naggum] Professional Programmer :Naggum Software Electronic Text :0118 OSLO, NORWAY Computer Communications +47-2-836-863 Kyongsok Kim Dept. of Comp. Sci., North Dakota State University e-mail: kkim@plains.nodak.edu; kkim@plains.bitnet; ...!uunet!plains!kkim