Re: Encoding Personal Use Ideographs (was Re: Level of Unicode support required for various languages)

(Apologies for accidentally sending this to the Unicore list.)

On 11/1/07, James Kass <[email protected]> wrote:

> Ben Monroe wrote,
>
> >No. My ID has U+9580 U+9F8D.
> >As much as I have tried (and continue) to fix that, the character
> ><U+2FF5 U+9580 U+9F8D> can not be entered into a computer so is
> >rejected. The one official exception that I am aware of is for a
> >registered seal, which may be handled manually and does not
> >necessarily need to be computer processed. That is precisely why I
> >asked if it would be sufficient.
>
> A registered seal might be viewed in the same light as
> a registered logo.

I would appreciate it if someone who knows for sure could give me a
definite answer.

> When you say that the character <U+2FF5 U+9580 U+9F8D> can not
> be entered into a computer, do you mean because it does not
> exist as a character,

Of course it exists. I use it on a daily basis.
If you mean as an encoded character in some character set, then no it
does not exist.

> or because U+2FF5 is not accepted by the ID issuers?

I do not know whether their system is Unicode, JIS, or something else.
At the time, the issue was not about IDS. It was about the single
glyph that I am describing  here as <U+2FF5 U+9580 U+9F8D>. I was told
that there is no way to input it.

> There must be other people facing the same lack of support.

When I was in college, one of my roommates by the name of Saitō told
me that he wrote the first character in a particular way that he could
not input it in a computer. I do not remember the details anymore, but
I suspect he was referring to the JIS character set. In any case, he
would substitute a similar variant for it when entering it in a
computer.

Last year I registered for a national test.
I hand wrote the application and send it in. When I got registration
confirmation, my surname came back printed as a black square (probably
U+25A0). Similarly, I am often forced to substitute <U+2FF5 U+9580
U+9F8D> with U+9580 U+9F8D when entering it in a computer.

I suspect it is similar to people with diacritics in their name.
Depending on the environment, diacritics often need to be stripped.
(Of course that is not a Unicode problem, but the issue is similar.)

> >I tried PUA in the past.
> >Most people could not be bothered to install the font.
> >Also, many people are suspicious, for good reason, of attachments.
> >It's more difficult than you may imagine to get strangers to install fonts.
>
> Users of constructed scripts don't have the advantage of a
> Unicode Standard, yet manage to exchange data nicely using
> conventions such as provided by the ConScript Unicode
> Registry.  If enough users lack computer support for
> their personal characters, what would be wrong with setting
> up some kind of PUA registry for personal characters?
> (One drawback may be that, if the allowable set of I.D.
> characters excludes ideographic description characters,
> then the set may well exclude PUA characters, too.)

The script is clearly Han, not a constructed script.
In any case, I desire to use it whenever writing in Japanese, not just
for a select limited audience. In the past, most people would not be
bothered to install it.
In which case, just using <U+2FF5 U+9580 U+9F8D> is the simplest. Even
if someones environment does not render it as desired (likely), U+9580
U+9F8D should still display.

> (Which code point did you use?)

I'm away from the computer with that font, so I'll have to check a little later.

Ben Monroe