RE: Emphasis skip property? [W3C I18N Action #99]

Hi Robin et al,

 

Thank for the note.

 

I want to call out that, while this seems to answer the question in our specific case, it doesn’t answer the more general question of how to approach Unicode with requests for issues such as character property management. 

 

* W3C may not want to maintain it, but that does not mean that the UTC wants to do so—nor, more relevantly, that it has the resources to do so.

 

I will note that the UTC is more generally in the business of managing lists of character properties and that TUS (and related materials, such as the UCD) is a better place for information about characters _in general_ than having various W3C Specifications and Notes try to manage it. For one thing, the Web is not the only application that might care about such things, our standards are not the obvious place to look, and we are not probably the right standards body to make decisions like this. 

 

If there is a concern about human resources available for tasks that we’re requesting, I will note that all of the directly copied W3C folks have done work in the Unicode space in the past. We are not proposing an “unfunded mandate”. We just want to ensure that the work is done in the right way in the right place, where the results will be accessible and properly maintained. 

 

I’m well aware that Unicode is a volunteer-based organization and that wishes frequently exceed capacity. I’d be happy to help with this, as, no doubt, would others on this thread.

 

Kind regards,

 

Addison

 

From: Robin Leroy <eggrobin@unicode.org> 
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2024 8:52 AM
To: Addison Phillips <addisoni18n@gmail.com>
Cc: Mark Davis Ⓤ <mark@unicode.org>; Markus Scherer <markus.icu@gmail.com>; petercon@unicode.org; craig@unicode.org; asmus@unicode.org; Ken Whistler <kenwhistler@sonic.net>; public-i18n-core@w3.org; Florian Rivoal <florian@rivoal.net>; fantasai@inkedblade.net; unicoRe@unicode.org
Subject: Re: Emphasis skip property? [W3C I18N Action #99]

 

Le ven. 24 mai 2024 à 20:28, Addison Phillips <addisoni18n@gmail.com <mailto:addisoni18n@gmail.com> > a écrit : 

The issue pertains to the use of emphasis marks (e.g. Japanese bouten). It is customary to skip punctuation characters in these emphasis systems. See [2] and [3] below for specific text (where there is a list of symbols affected).

Le dim. 26 mai 2024 à 17:33, Addison Phillips <addisoni18n@gmail.com <mailto:addisoni18n@gmail.com> > a écrit :

My real question is: how do we get this on the agenda for the UTC in a future version of Unicode? And how do we track it? Do we need to produce some kind of proposal? Periodic emails are probably not the answer…

You got it on the UTC agenda in January already.

See note 178-N1 <https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2024/24006.htm#178-N1>  and the documents referenced therein.

You can see the outcome in the core specification in the 16.0 Review Draft, Section 4.5 <https://unicode.org/versions/Unicode16.0.0/core-spec/chapter-4/#G124142>  (search for « wakiten »).

 

Le ven. 24 mai 2024 à 20:28, Addison Phillips <addisoni18n@gmail.com <mailto:addisoni18n@gmail.com> > a écrit :

W3C doesn’t want to maintain the list of characters to skip/not skip: it would probably make more sense for Unicode to maintain it. Participants speculate that this might be achieved by splitting a general category or via some Unicode property (or some other mechanism). 


W3C may not want to maintain it, but that does not mean that the UTC wants to do so—nor, more relevantly, that it has the resources to do so.

Note that L2/24-009R <https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2024/24009r-utc178-properties-recs.pdf>  Section 2.4, which recommended note 178-N1, has the following at the end of its Discussion section:

PAG thinks that the UTC should not build and maintain this list of exceptions/overrides for a use case outside Unicode specifications.