Re: Level of Unicode support required for various languages

On Oct 29, 2007, at 6:28 PM, Andrew West wrote:

> On 29/10/2007, Peter Constable <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> I guess I assumed that that was never intended to provide a  
>> substitute for encoding the characters needed for Zhuang text -- it  
>> would be a terrible way to represent Zhuang text, though I suppose  
>> you can argue (as you have done) that it's valid.
>
> I'm sure that John has never suggested that IDS sequences should be a
> substitute for encoding, merely that given what the Unicode Standard
> currently says, it would be a feasible interim solution.
>

TUS is most emphatic on this point:  An IDS is *not* the same thing as  
encoding.  It should be considered a better-than-nothing stop-gap  
until something appropriate comes along (either an encoded character  
or a registered variation sequence).  I suppose that a text in say  
Zhuang could use a custom font to hide the fact that most of it  
consists of IDSs, but in such a case Unicode explicitly warns that no  
operation other than display-related ones will likely work.  Using an  
IDS in running text is a hack.

> The question is just what exactly the intent of that paragraph in the
> Unicode Standard was. It sure sounds to me as if it is suggesting (and
> Unicode is sanctioning) a mechanism for component based represention
> of unencoded ideographs -- if the character was already encoded why
> would you want the rendering system to render an IDS as a single glyph
> and treat it as a single unit for editing purposes?
>

The intent is to allow systems to represent IDSs using single glyphs,  
if they can and choose to do so, either through on-the-fly composition  
(which will almost certainly be pretty ugly) or through the ligature  
mechanisms available in smart fonts.  The latter is more likely.  In  
this case someone with a need to represent a particular unencoded  
character (or a set of such) could use a custom font to, at least,  
make their text look decent.

> I guess it must have been written at a time when people didn't worry
> so much about security and spoofing issues. I would suggest that the
> UTC should consider removing the offending paragraph at the earliest
> opportunity, and replace it with a statement that IDS sequences are
> intended to be rendered as a visible sequence of IDC characters and
> ideographic components, and not composed into a single glyph. But then
> maybe it is too late for that now ?
>
> Andrew
>


No, go ahead and file a defect report.  I doubt this would change  
because I don't think the problem of spoofing is really serious for  
IDSs.  For one thing, for spoofing to work, you'd have to have a  
system which can create decent-looking glyphs on-the-fly from IDSs,  
and they're just too coarse to make that likely.  For another, given  
the low-utility of IDSs you simply have to state that a string  
containing them isn't valid for whatever purpose.  But I'm not going  
to second-guess the UTC and they may think it's a serious enough  
problem to take action.

=====
John H. Jenkins
[email protected]