Bug#99933: Bug#99324: Default charset should be UTF-8
On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 12:34:40PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 04:47:18PM +0200, Radovan Garabik wrote:
>
> > The situation is IMHO quite similar to german for using Fraktur
> > (S?tterlin) script - it is a latin script, and unicode consortium
> > (IMHO rightfully) decided that it is a typesetting difference - not an
> > encoding one (you can - and sometimes you do - typeset english text
> > using Fraktur fonts, after all). If Germans were using it still today,
> > you would have exactly the same problems as with CJK scripts now (of
> > course, the complexity of CJK is much greater than that of a latin
> > scripts)
>
> I disagree. The Han Unification issue is more like the difference
> between the latin and the italic character sets. Yes, many characters
No, because latin (upright) and italics are used interchangebly,
whereas fraktur carries implicit connotation of language used -
just like different glyphs for unified CJK charset.
> are similar, however there are also some characters which are unique to
> each representaiton.
>
> Also, Unicode does include Fraktur characters.
but in mathematical symbols - that is a completely different beast
>
> > I am really not sure if unicode went the right way, I feel the ability
> > to display Chinese name in a Japanese document using Chinese glyphs
> > (or vice versa) is something that should not be get rid of...
>
> And, this could be rectified -- with Unicode 3.1, they have the code
> space to represent each major representation of the character set.
if only they instead of talking how bad is unicode started working
on improving it (duck, run :-))
>
> > perhaps it should consider them to be different scripts with different
> > encodings, but when would it stop? Making italics, boldface etc. to be
> > different characters?
>
> Unicode already does that. Take a look at the mathematical alphanumeric
> symbols [1D400-1D744]. For example:
> 1D400 MATHEMATICAL BOLD CAPITAL A
the reason and purpose of these characters is quite different
from "base" unicode characters
>
> > As for X11, fonts are being rapidly developped.
>
> For currently relevant policy it matters what actually works.
of course. That's why my proposal is very mildly worded and
gives a lot of freedom to maintainers to decide what charset they
want.
>
> > >
> > > "Package may (at the discretion of the maintainer) include
> > > documentation files in other encodings, if they are present also in
> > > canonical encoding, and if the encodings used are clearly marked.
> > > If a particular font is required, that should be clearly marked."
> >
> > You do not know what is a particular font... one of
> > (traditional|simplified)C,J,K, or the full font name?
>
> I'm not sure I understand this question (I don't know enough about
> oriental languages and fonts to give a full answer in any event).
>
well, would you indicate just "this README needs japanese unicode font"
and the user has to figure out by himself what is that
or "this README needs -misc-fixed-*-*-*-ja-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1"
and the user is fubar when he does not have that font.
>
> > More appropriate example from the history is the war between EBDIC,
> > ASCII and other proprietary encodings... thanks god one and only one
> > encoding won.
>
> ebdic vs. ascii wasn't about supported languages.
true, but the mess in encodings was quite comparable to what
is there today outside of Latin-1 world.
And the peace ASCII brought could be compared
to peace that (hopefully :-)) unicode brings one day.
>
> > > I agree that, except for the oriental languages and legacy systems,
> > > unicode is just about perfect in its ability to represent scripts in
> > > many languages.
> >
> > and that is something terribly needed today, with this
> > world wired together.
>
> I agree.
>
> However, Unicode is not a mature standard, so we need to be careful in
> places where it would cause problems.
>
Of course. Nobody is talking about compulsory switching
to unicode _right now_.
--
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| Radovan Garabik http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__ garabik @ melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk |
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