Issue 240 reply

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your interest, suggestions, and discussion so far. It looks 
like there is general consensus that it could be possible to use Unicode 
code points that correspond to Bliss-characters to refer to concepts 
(i.e. as the `adapt-symbol` attribute's value) - currently the attribute 
expects Bliss IDs (integers). Let's look at how both of these would be 
authored.

To help you understand the following examples, think of Bliss-characters 
in the same way as you would Chinese or Japanese characters - they mean 
something on their own (as opposed to representing phonetics, like 
individual letters in e.g. English), and you can combine them to make 
more complex words.

Bliss IDs, on the other hand, exist for both the individual characters, 
and for the more complex words.

Here are a couple of examples: in each example, the same content is 
marked up with Bliss IDs (integers) and with the corresponding 
Bliss-characters (which would be input via their separate Unicode code 
point(s)).

**Example 1 (concept requiring a single Bliss-character to identify)**

```html
<p>Would you like a <span adapt-symbol="13882">drink</span>?</p>

<p>Would you like a <span adapt-symbol="U+0xE251">drink</span>?</p>
```

**Example 2 (concept requiring multiple Bliss-characters to identify)**

  ```html
<p>A nice cup of <span adapt-symbol="17511">tea</span>.</p>

<p>A nice cup of <span adapt-symbol="U+0xE251,U+0xE00E">tea</span>.</p>
```

We want to make it easy for authors to find the Bliss-characters (code 
points) that correspond to the concept they want to convey. Even looking 
up info on the code points will not give them the full set of recognised 
concepts. This is because most recognised concepts (each identified by a 
single Bliss ID) are composed of multiple Bliss-characters, as per the 
example above.

In order to assist content authors, we have two things to add:

* We have a [W3C Registry spec that enumerates existing concepts, and 
their corresponding Bliss IDs](https://www.w3.org/TR/aac-registry/) - 
this can be updated to include the Unicode code points that also 
identify the concept. We also hope to have the concept descriptions 
localised into several different languages.

* I made a (still slightly buggy!) [prototype authoring
tool](https://matatk.agrip.org.uk/adaptable-content-authoring-tool/editor/)
that naively demonstrates how the authoring process might work (it only 
supports Bliss symbols for rendering).

We're very interested as to your views on this, both implementation 
concerns, and any thoughts you may have on the authoring side of things.

**Important note:** Bliss' inclusion into Unicode is not yet finalised, 
so we must wait for that before making any normative specifications 
based on any Bliss-related code points.

Received on Tuesday, 2 April 2024 14:18:37 UTC