Re: Proposed note about C064 and C065

Martin Duerst a écrit :
> I'm not very happy about this. I think the intent of the WG at the time
> of authoring the document was clearly different from the text below.

My recollection is different, but of course that was a while ago and I 
might be wrong.

> In my understanding, the WG felt that it was important that all specs
> would use the best available (i.e. newest) references to the Unicode
> Standard, even if this meant the use of a minor version and longer
> text in the reference section.
> 
> I think there were various reasons for this (I don't think they were
> discussed explicitly):
> 
> - Contrary to many other specifications, the main point distinguishing
>   major from minor versions in the case of the Unicode Standard is
>   whether a book is produced or not. Production of a book is not only
>   related to content, but also to timelines,... It is therefore easily
>   possible, and has happened in the past, that a 'minor' update added
>   important scripts and characters.

This ("'minor' update") confuses minor versions and update versions of 
Unicode.  Update versions (the 3rd number in x.y.z) do not add 
characters or scripts and are uninteresting to most specs, especially in 
the context of a generic reference where one is trying to say "do 
whatever the current Unicode standard says".  The proposed note does 
talk about "the very latest update version of Unicode".

> - It seems that there are some people that have difficulties of getting
>   the idea of a generic reference.

Agreed. And perhaps our choice of calling it "generic" was not the best one.

> As an example, the reference to
>   Unicode 2.0 in XML 1.0 was (except for name syntax) clearly intended
>   as a generic reference, but many people thought that the spec as
>   written made it impossible to use post-Unicode 2.0 characters *in data*.
>   To help such people, even if just a little bit, using the newest
>   reference may be better. (and of course the "as updated from time to time"
>   text is even more important).

Of course the "as updated from time to time" is what matters most.  As 
for using the newest reference, the proposed note does not discourage 
that, in fact it gives pointers where to find the required info.  What 
the note makes clear is that there is no obligation to *track* the 
latest version, as in updating a spec whenever Unicode issues a new update.


> - It seems unhelpful to the reader of the spec (and remember, there are
>   usually many more readers than writers) to have to find out on her own
>   about already available updates. It is clear that we can't list future
>   updates, but dropping current updates just as a convenience to the
>   spec writer seems inappropriate.

I don't think that argument holds water.  In all cases the reader does 
have to check, there's no other way to find out whether there have been 
updates since the publication of the spec, whatever the starting point 
is (current at time of publication or not).  This is just a fact of life 
with a version-independent reference to a standard that does have new 
versions from time to time.


> The above reasons, and the fact that the WG itself carefully made sure
> that the full version (including minors) was in the reference seem to
> support this. If we want to change this, I suggest that:
> - We preferably do so in a general update of Charmod.
> - We actually change the examples to match what the spec says.

In what way?  The spec says to use the latest version and the examples 
do that (but of course are stale by now).  What should we change here?

Regards,

-- 
François

Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2007 14:28:06 UTC