5 ms·

> and combining codepoints are mostly not characters in their own right. The Unicode standard originally defined "character" as a code point (not vice versa),

by a1369209993 6y ago

> and combining codepoints are mostly not characters in their own right. The Unicode standard originally defined "character" as a code point (not vice versa), and until less than five years ago I could not have a discussion about the differences between characters and code points (and why the latter are bad) without some idiot showing up to claim there was no difference, since Unicode defined them to be same. However on looking for a citation, it seems that http://www.unicode.org/glossary/ http://www.unicode.org/glossary/ does not actually support that claim (although bits such as "Character [...] (3) The basic unit of encoding for the Unicode character encoding" do little to oppose it). So I can't actualy prove that the lies of said idiots were deliberate on the part the UC. Which is to say I was mistaken in assuming that equivalence to be deliberate lie rather than a miscommunication (probably). > How are Kanji text and emoji not? Kanji are monochrome and can be written with physical writing implents such as pencils. Emoji aren't and can't; a chunk of graphite can't make green and purple marks for a image (not character) of a eggplant. > I'm genuinely curious what you think is the distinction. Apologies, I should have been a bit more explicit there. > The base codepoints are generally characters in their own rights And to extent that that's the case, we should, where possible, be talking about the characters, not the implement details of representing them. > Even granting you are right, how would it be made to happen? No idea, but I'm not inclined to pretend something isn't bad just because I can't do anything about it.

cryptonector 6y ago
> So I can't actualy prove that the lies of said idiots were deliberate on the part the UC. I started having to deal with Unicode back around 2001. Even back then the distinctions between code unit, codepoint, character, and glyph, were all well-delineated. Very little has changed since then, really, just more scripts, some bug fixes, and -yes- the addition of emoji, > Kanji are monochrome and can be written with physical writing implents such as pencils. Emoji aren't and can't; a chunk of graphite can't make green and purple marks for a image (not character) of a eggplant. I mean, cave paintings were color and kinda ideographic, and you do know that you can use colored crayons/pencils/pens/paint/printers to make colored text, yes? :-) I'm sure you can make a monochrome emoji font. In a few thousand years we might evolve today's emoji to look like today's Han/Kanji -- that's what happened to those, after all! Seriously, I can't see how color is enough to make emoji not text. Kids nowadays write sentences in Romance languages and English using mostly emoji sometimes. It can be like a word game. In fact, writing in Japanese can be a bit like a word game. Animation begins to really push it though, because that can't be printed. > And to extent that that's the case, we should, where possible, be talking about the characters, not the implement details of representing them. And we do. We talk about LATIN SMALL LETTER A and so on. Yes, U+0061 is easier sometimes. > No idea, but I'm not inclined to pretend something isn't bad just because I can't do anything about it. Fair. Myself I think of Unicode as... mostly faithful to the actual features of human written language scripts, with a few unfortunate things, mostly just Han unification, UCS-2, and UTF-16. Honestly, considering how long the project has been ongoing, I think it's surprisingly well-done -- surprisingly not-fucked-up. So I'm inclined to see the glass as half-full. Let's put it this way: there are a lot of mistakes to fix once we get the time machine working. Mistakes in Unicode are very, very far down the priority list.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > I started having to deal with Unicode back around 2001. I don't remember the date, but I first had to deal with unicode when it was a 16-bit encoding (pre- surrogate pairs). > I mean, cave paintings were color and kinda ideographic Sure, but they weren't text, which is what we were actually talking about. > you can use colored [whatever] That's a property of the rendering, not of the characters; eg <font color=red>X</font> is a colored font tag containing a non-colored character (er, a character without color information), not vice-versa. > Let's put it this way: there are a lot of mistakes to fix once we get the time machine working. Mistakes in Unicode are very, very far down the priority list. That's fair; I have a very long and very angry priority list, but I was mainly just objecting to > all [rather than some] this complexity [is] not the UC's fault and grabbing a couple of specific examples off the top of my head. (Although now I realize I never got around to complaining about zero-width joiner, or 'skin tone' modifiers, or parity sensitive flag characters, or...)

cryptonector 6y ago

> So I can't actualy prove that the lies of said idiots were deliberate on the part the UC. I started having to deal with Unicode back around 2001. Even back then the distinctions between code unit, codepoint, character, and glyph, were all well-delineated. Very little has changed since then, really, just more scripts, some bug fixes, and -yes- the addition of emoji, > Kanji are monochrome and can be written with physical writing implents such as pencils. Emoji aren't and can't; a chunk of graphite can't make green and purple marks for a image (not character) of a eggplant. I mean, cave paintings were color and kinda ideographic, and you do know that you can use colored crayons/pencils/pens/paint/printers to make colored text, yes? :-) I'm sure you can make a monochrome emoji font. In a few thousand years we might evolve today's emoji to look like today's Han/Kanji -- that's what happened to those, after all! Seriously, I can't see how color is enough to make emoji not text. Kids nowadays write sentences in Romance languages and English using mostly emoji sometimes. It can be like a word game. In fact, writing in Japanese can be a bit like a word game. Animation begins to really push it though, because that can't be printed. > And to extent that that's the case, we should, where possible, be talking about the characters, not the implement details of representing them. And we do. We talk about LATIN SMALL LETTER A and so on. Yes, U+0061 is easier sometimes. > No idea, but I'm not inclined to pretend something isn't bad just because I can't do anything about it. Fair. Myself I think of Unicode as... mostly faithful to the actual features of human written language scripts, with a few unfortunate things, mostly just Han unification, UCS-2, and UTF-16. Honestly, considering how long the project has been ongoing, I think it's surprisingly well-done -- surprisingly not-fucked-up. So I'm inclined to see the glass as half-full. Let's put it this way: there are a lot of mistakes to fix once we get the time machine working. Mistakes in Unicode are very, very far down the priority list.

a1369209993 6y ago
> I started having to deal with Unicode back around 2001. I don't remember the date, but I first had to deal with unicode when it was a 16-bit encoding (pre- surrogate pairs). > I mean, cave paintings were color and kinda ideographic Sure, but they weren't text, which is what we were actually talking about. > you can use colored [whatever] That's a property of the rendering, not of the characters; eg <font color=red>X</font> is a colored font tag containing a non-colored character (er, a character without color information), not vice-versa. > Let's put it this way: there are a lot of mistakes to fix once we get the time machine working. Mistakes in Unicode are very, very far down the priority list. That's fair; I have a very long and very angry priority list, but I was mainly just objecting to > all [rather than some] this complexity [is] not the UC's fault and grabbing a couple of specific examples off the top of my head. (Although now I realize I never got around to complaining about zero-width joiner, or 'skin tone' modifiers, or parity sensitive flag characters, or...)