RE: Unicode 5.1, Egyptian Transliteration, and Fonts

Michael Everson asked:

> >Such things (in this case, the suggestion that
> >U+0486 have a property change Script=Cyrillic --> Script=Inherited)
> >only happen if a specific proposal to do so is prepared
> >and tabled for the UTC, along with a request for an agenda
> >item to discuss and decide upon it.
> 
> Is it necessary for this property change to be made for Egyptologists 
> to make use of this character? 

No.

> If so, could you explain why?
> 
> >And since this is proposing a property change for an
> >existing character that has long had the property it
> >has, simply providing beta review feedback (which focusses
> >more on the properties for the newly added characters)
> >wouldn't be enough.
> 
> The only language the character would have been used for would be Old 
> Church Slavonic.

Well, the most *likely* use would be for that. But you can't
know for sure what someone might have used it for. The
fact that you are advocating in this thread its use with
Latin letters for Egyptological yod is a case in point. 

> Since Cyrillic also makes use of Common characters 
> like U+0301 it is hard to see how changing this property would make a 
> negative impact on OCS data.

It likely wouldn't. That isn't the issue, however.

Changing character properties is more likely to impact algorithms
and protocols than it is to impact existing data per se. In the
case of the Script property, you need to consider what
the impact of changing the Script of a character is for
regular expressions and for things like font selection
heuristics.

And in any case, the absence of a negative impact might be
a reason not to not do something, but it isn't a positive
argument as to the benefit of actually doing it. That's why
something like this needs a proposal for the UTC to consider.

> 
> >Making suggestions on the [email protected] list doesn't
> >actually accomplish any change in the standard, unless
> >it is followed up formally with the UTC.
> 
> I have been posting this question to the Unicore list.

Posting a question to the Unicore list doesn't automatically turn it
into proposal or a UTC agenda item, either.

--Ken