5 ms·

There are differences as well as similarities. I'm no expert, but shouldn't, say, U+4ECA still translate to 'now' no matter if you draw a particular line horizo

by cygx 7y ago

There are differences as well as similarities. I'm no expert, but shouldn't, say, U+4ECA still translate to 'now' no matter if you draw a particular line horizontally or diagonally? There are also some mandatory[1] ligatures in Fraktur unavailable in Unicode. What if I wanted to preserve that distinction in historic writing? edit: [1] I think the mandatory ones are actually there (just not in Fraktur), it's some optional ones like ſch that are missing.

anoncake 7y ago
> There are differences as well as similarities. I'm no expert, but shouldn't, say, U+4ECA still translate to 'now' no matter if you draw a particular line horizontally or diagonally? No, since "now" is an English word, not a Japanese or Chinese one. > There are also some mandatory[1] ligatures in Fraktur unavailable in Unicode. Unicode doesn't encode ligatures except for backwards compatibility.
- cygx 7y ago
  Unicode doesn't encode ligatures except for backwards compatibility. And it doesn't encode separate variants for unified Han characters. As in, that's not an argument, just a description of the status quo.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    Of course it is. Ligatures aren't characters, they're glyphs that represent multiple characters. Unicode does not encode glyphs, that's simply not its job. No more than encoding what font to use or when to render text in italic.
    - cygx 7y ago
      Which is the whole point of Han unification, the argument being that whether or not a particular line in U+4ECA is horizontal or diagonal is just like that. What's the difference?
      - anoncake 7y ago
        To the contrary: What any line in any glyph looks like is of no concern because Unicode doesn't deal with glyphs. It deals with abstract characters that don't have appearances to begin with. "Α" and "A" look exactly the same (at least in most fonts). But each has its own code point because the GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA simply isn't the LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A or any other Latin letter.

by cygx 7y ago

anoncake 7y ago

> There are differences as well as similarities. I'm no expert, but shouldn't, say, U+4ECA still translate to 'now' no matter if you draw a particular line horizontally or diagonally? No, since "now" is an English word, not a Japanese or Chinese one. > There are also some mandatory[1] ligatures in Fraktur unavailable in Unicode. Unicode doesn't encode ligatures except for backwards compatibility.

cygx 7y ago
Unicode doesn't encode ligatures except for backwards compatibility. And it doesn't encode separate variants for unified Han characters. As in, that's not an argument, just a description of the status quo.
- anoncake 7y ago
  Of course it is. Ligatures aren't characters, they're glyphs that represent multiple characters. Unicode does not encode glyphs, that's simply not its job. No more than encoding what font to use or when to render text in italic.
  - cygx 7y ago
    Which is the whole point of Han unification, the argument being that whether or not a particular line in U+4ECA is horizontal or diagonal is just like that. What's the difference?
    - anoncake 7y ago
      To the contrary: What any line in any glyph looks like is of no concern because Unicode doesn't deal with glyphs. It deals with abstract characters that don't have appearances to begin with. "Α" and "A" look exactly the same (at least in most fonts). But each has its own code point because the GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA simply isn't the LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A or any other Latin letter.