RE: Your comments on Character Model Fundamentals [LC076]

Hi Bjoern,

Thanks for your reply. My (personal) response follows. We'll have to discuss
your specific comments as a group, of course.

Best Regards,

Addison

Bjoern replied:

> >We feel that there is a link between C068 and the use (or abuse)
> >of private use area code points. The linkage, succinctly, is that
> >if you follow the other requirements in CharMod, the only code
> >points that are available for the form of abuse described
> >(prohibited) by C068 are PUA code points.
>
> That's surprising as that is already covered by C073, C037, C038, and
> C039 since if these requirements are met, you can hardly ever run into
> a situation where this would apply to PUA code points. If this is about
> PUA code points, I am also not sure how graphics and images would help,

This isn't actually covered by the four requirements you cite, whose purpose
is basically to ensure that PUA code points are available for the
tranmission of *characters* while prohibiting W3C specs from assigning
specific characters to any particular PUA code point. Those requirements
basic ensure the accessibility of and non-discriminatory use of PUA code
points with W3C technologies.

This requirement encourages specifications to provide mechanisms other than
code points (including the PUA code points) for the transmission of graphic
images and other non-character junk in-line to some text or content. C076
prohibits the use of code points other than PUA code points for this purpose
(e.g. you can't use U+2601 CLOUD to send a picture of Norm Mendelson to your
friends), so by elimination, C068 refers to PUA (and unassigned) code
points. It means you can't use U+E002 to send a picture of Norm Mendelson to
your friends either.
>
> I would not write Klingon using <img .../><img .../><img .../>... So it

But encoding "Klingon" (the funny shaped ones, not the Latin transcription)
would be a valid use of PUA code points: here is a "script" not encoded in
Unicode where the content is text and NOT an array of images.

> would seem this is meant to be about implementations that cannot offer
> loading arbitrary symbols as graphics from online resources due to
> resource constraints and want to offer them through other means such as
> <cloud-with-rain-drops/> or something. In this case the section needs
> to be substantively clarified as that is not really obvious. I consider
> C068 to be about "abuse" of assigned code points such as ASCII-art.

One result of your comments (which resulted in the removal of C069, please
note) is that the I18N WG has adopted a position that ASCII art is not (by
CharMod standards, at least) "abuse" of character technology. Certainly the
ability to reference a graphic image as suggested by C068 helps avoid the
need for ASCII art, but by no means can C068 be stretched to preclude such
"abusive" use of characters :-). We are not concerned here with using
characters in a funny way. We are concerned with redefining the semantics of
each individual character.

C068 does tend to *suggest* that ASCII art is misuse of characters and
certainly there is nothing wrong with that suggestion, is there? Real
graphic image technology should be made available where it is applicable.

What we're getting at is: defining U+E003 to be the "combining raindrop"
character and using it with U+2601 to create the "rain today" character for
use in your weather map of Europe... that's a misapplication of character
technology.

Admittedly, we could contemplate moving this requirement, but it does follow
logically (at least we think it does) from the other PUA items: we think
that the association with PUA rather than general glyph presentation stuff
helps cement that we are not talking about smilies/emoticons or drawing a
box with + - and | characters.
>
> But I also do not think that using the PUA for <cloud-with-rain-drops/>
> is obvious either, I think C076, C068 and C041 merit their own section.
> It would probably also work to have them in "3.3 Units of visual
> rendering" or to re-work "4.5 Private use code points" to include these
> issues under a more general heading with a more general intro text.

We will consider your comments again, but I don't think we'll end up moving
the requirement(s) at this time.
>
> >With regard to your other comments about C076, you are correct and
> >we are modifying the document to use the correct term (coded
> >character set) instead of character encoding.
>
> Okay, thanks.

Thanks for the comments! They've been very helpful.

Received on Thursday, 28 October 2004 20:33:55 UTC