- From: Asmus Freytag <asmusf@ix.netcom.com>
- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:49:09 -0800
- To: Tex Texin <tex@yahoo-inc.com>
- CC: Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>, WWW International <www-international@w3.org>
Having just read Tex' lengthy, and interesting plea for consistent support of bidi control codes... He writes: "I understand that the authors were following the W3C/Unicode recommendation" Now, it's important to not over-interpret these recommendations. The recommendations in http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr20/ have been evolving, albeit slowly, due to lack of active input. They used to contain many items that have proved not practical or limited to HTML. I wouldn't be surprised if the current issue would result in a change to these recommendations. When it comes to the question whether to use markup or use controls, it's really a matter of designing the markup language. The Consortium's primary purpose should be to ensure that *if* control codes (or other characters defined in Unicode) are supported, that they are supported in a way that matches their definition in Unicode. As long as control codes (when present) are interpreted as intended by Unicode (or replaced on input by corresponding markup), there shouldn't be a principled reason for the UTC to reject their use. This is really a matter of the preferred design of the markup language which is a W3C matter. (I'd suspect that individual technical experts on the UTC would give input that reflects their personal experience and preferences, and many have experience both in character coding and markup languages, so continuing to hash this out jointly would be beneficial). That said, with my departure, the UTC has lost their primary editor for the recommendations, so somebody would have to come forward on their side to pick up the work, if it is to be taken up again. A./
Received on Monday, 18 February 2008 20:49:24 UTC