Timeline for What limitation will we face if each user-perceived character is assigned to one codepoint?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
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| May 13, 2012 at 17:03 | comment | added | Pacerier | @tchrist As in your example, in Greek, we can't simply combine a Ω + ´ + ` + ῾ because it doesn't belong to that language. I grant that you can combine Ω with ´ because it is valid in Greek. I grant that you can combine Ι + ´ + ¨ because it is valid as well. But combinations aren't arbitrary in a natural language. Even after adding all possible variations of diacritic combinations, Greek has only 188 characters. What's wrong with giving each of them a unique code point? | |
| May 13, 2012 at 16:59 | comment | added | Pacerier |
@tchrist For example, in Japanese we can't simply combine a は + ﾞ + ﾟ because it doesn't make any sense in that language. Yes I'm aware Unicode allows us to combine a は + ﾞ + ﾟ, my argument is that that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Unicode should have just assigned a unique code point to each character for the ~7000 natural languages used on Earth.
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| May 13, 2012 at 16:53 | comment | added | Pacerier | @tchrist I hope we attack the argument and not the person. Your argument is that they are valid because they are legit Unicode extended grapheme clusters. My argument is that Unicode shouldn't have made them legit because the result isn't a valid character in any natural language at all. Math notations, emoticons, elf languages, and IPA transcriptions are irrelevant to the argument. I'm arguing against using diacritics for the ~7000 natural languages used on Earth. goo.gl/lq7Xd, goo.gl/C2dn | |
| May 13, 2012 at 15:56 | comment | added | tchrist | @Pacerier Because they’re legit Unicode extended grapheme clusters, that’s why. You are far too tied to non-specialist English for this to make sense to you. You should read the explanation of and justification for combining characters in the Unicode Standard, because you clearly fail to understand, or fail to recognize, or perhaps fail to accept, the motivations that the Unicode Consortium had for these. Even for the simple Latin and Greek cases, you need countably infinite variations due to matters such as combining marks in IPA and mathematical notation. | |
| May 13, 2012 at 15:49 | comment | added | Pacerier | @tchrist I don't understand why you are bringing in style rules here. Underlining and bolding are effects on characters. For example, a "z" character whether underlined or bolded is the same thing in English. I'm talking about the characters a natural language uses. My point is that the total number of characters in the ~7000 natural languages used on Earth is below 4b. So Unicode should have just kept it simple and assign 1 number to each of them. Even the number of Chinese characters is only roughly 100k+, let it expand by 1000 times and we have 100 million+, still far from 4b. | |
| May 13, 2012 at 15:42 | comment | added | tchrist | @Pacerier Disagree. Consider combining single and double overlines and underlines. | |
| May 13, 2012 at 15:41 | comment | added | Pacerier |
@tchrist Iterating graphemes is starkly different than iterating words. In a language, there's no fixed number of possible word combinations, but there's certainly a fixed number of possible characters. As an example, Unicode allows us to merge e with ﾞ with ﾟ with ˆ with ˝. But the resulting character is unused in any language. It is unlikely that there are 2^32 (4 billion) standalone characters, because there's no such thing as language characters being subject to infinite variation.
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| May 13, 2012 at 14:24 | comment | added | tchrist | @Pacerier You really are missing the point. You cannot possibly have one code point per extended grapheme cluster, because the number of the latter easily exceeds 32 bits, let alone 21 of them. It just isn’t possible. You need to learn to iterating by grapheme clusters just as you need to learn how to iterate by words. Both are higher-level concepts of any open-ended problem space that is subject to infinite variation. | |
| Dec 9, 2011 at 7:39 | comment | added | Pacerier | In fact the standard could have taken 32 bits for each code point, in such a way that they will never "run out of code points" (2^32 possible points) | |
| Dec 9, 2011 at 2:43 | comment | added | dan04 | @Loki: Remember that Unicode originally planned to only have one "plane". | |
| Dec 9, 2011 at 1:14 | comment | added | Loki Astari | I don't think running out of code points was the problem. Only the BMP is full. The SMP is packing up but not full. Another 3/4 are very sparsely populated. Which leaves about 10 planes empty (each plane can have 65K code points). | |
| Dec 9, 2011 at 0:52 | history | answered | dan04 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |