5 ms·

Your answer illustrates my point perfectly, first the lack of a reasonable fall back mechanism. Of course I can start a hex editor, get the utf-8 encoding and t

by yk 10y ago

Your answer illustrates my point perfectly, first the lack of a reasonable fall back mechanism. Of course I can start a hex editor, get the utf-8 encoding and then look up the code point ( and theoretically add that character to a open font). A default font would just ship with every OS out there, and suddenly there would be a working fall back. Second mathematical symbols, consider the case were I get a text file considering mostly of ASCII 7 and some mathematical symbols which may render as mathematical symbols or as Chinese characters, since there is no way to specify the encoding in a text file and so I have to guess the encoding. (That is not helped by the roughly 17 standardized encodings that mostly agree with utf-8.)

mungoman2 10y ago
> Of course I can start a hex editor, get the utf-8 encoding and then look up the code point Tip: a quicker way is to copy the unrendered box and Google it.
leni536 10y ago
> The Unicode tables include examples for all graphical code points: http://unicode.org/charts/ http://unicode.org/charts/. If you really wanted you can make them into a font No, last time I checked you are not legally allowed to do that.
- yk 10y ago
  I checked your link, then I proceeded to the terms of service and IANAL there they claim that all 'unicode software' is basically MIT licensed. (Please check with a lawyer before you conclude that word is MIT licensed.)
  - leni536 10y ago
    Now check any random chart: Fonts The shapes of the reference glyphs used in these code charts are not prescriptive. Considerable variation is to be expected in actual fonts. The particular fonts used in these charts were provided to the Unicode Consortium by a number of different font designers, who own the rights to the fonts. See http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html for a list. Terms of Use You may freely use these code charts for personal or internal business uses only. You may not incorporate them either wholly or in part into any product or publication, or otherwise distribute them without express written permission from the Unicode Consortium. However, you may provide links to these charts. The fonts and font data used in production of these code charts may NOT be extracted, or used in any other way in any product or publication, without permission or license granted by the typeface owner(s). The Unicode Consortium is not liable for errors or omissions in this file or the standard itself. Information on characters added to the Unicode Standard since the publication of the most recent version of the Unicode Standard, as well as on characters currently being considered for addition to the Unicode Standard can be found on the Unicode web site. Now you can try to track down the actual typeface owners one by one (this alone seems hopeless) and even then I doubt that you can get permission from all of them.
johncolanduoni 10y ago
> Second mathematical symbols, consider the case were I get a text file considering mostly of ASCII 7 and some mathematical symbols which may render as mathematical symbols or as Chinese characters, since there is no way to specify the encoding in a text file and so I have to guess the encoding. What does that have to do with Unicode adding anything? Are you really claiming that if we threw out Unicode like you recommend, and (if I'm understanding your point correctly) choose an encoding for the new version that looks nothing like ASCII the encoding mess would get better? I think continuing the migration of most transmission of text to UTF-8 and explicitly specifying encodings for everything that needs to stick with Latin-1, etc. is a better option, unless you propose codifying the new encoding in law to force adoption.

by yk 10y ago

mungoman2 10y ago

> Of course I can start a hex editor, get the utf-8 encoding and then look up the code point Tip: a quicker way is to copy the unrendered box and Google it.

leni536 10y ago

> The Unicode tables include examples for all graphical code points: http://unicode.org/charts/ http://unicode.org/charts/. If you really wanted you can make them into a font No, last time I checked you are not legally allowed to do that.

yk 10y ago
I checked your link, then I proceeded to the terms of service and IANAL there they claim that all 'unicode software' is basically MIT licensed. (Please check with a lawyer before you conclude that word is MIT licensed.)
- leni536 10y ago
  Now check any random chart: Fonts The shapes of the reference glyphs used in these code charts are not prescriptive. Considerable variation is to be expected in actual fonts. The particular fonts used in these charts were provided to the Unicode Consortium by a number of different font designers, who own the rights to the fonts. See http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html for a list. Terms of Use You may freely use these code charts for personal or internal business uses only. You may not incorporate them either wholly or in part into any product or publication, or otherwise distribute them without express written permission from the Unicode Consortium. However, you may provide links to these charts. The fonts and font data used in production of these code charts may NOT be extracted, or used in any other way in any product or publication, without permission or license granted by the typeface owner(s). The Unicode Consortium is not liable for errors or omissions in this file or the standard itself. Information on characters added to the Unicode Standard since the publication of the most recent version of the Unicode Standard, as well as on characters currently being considered for addition to the Unicode Standard can be found on the Unicode web site. Now you can try to track down the actual typeface owners one by one (this alone seems hopeless) and even then I doubt that you can get permission from all of them.

johncolanduoni 10y ago

> Second mathematical symbols, consider the case were I get a text file considering mostly of ASCII 7 and some mathematical symbols which may render as mathematical symbols or as Chinese characters, since there is no way to specify the encoding in a text file and so I have to guess the encoding. What does that have to do with Unicode adding anything? Are you really claiming that if we threw out Unicode like you recommend, and (if I'm understanding your point correctly) choose an encoding for the new version that looks nothing like ASCII the encoding mess would get better? I think continuing the migration of most transmission of text to UTF-8 and explicitly specifying encodings for everything that needs to stick with Latin-1, etc. is a better option, unless you propose codifying the new encoding in law to force adoption.