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Yes, and the people who prioritized the 16-bit size were OK with Japanese looking ridiculous in order to achieve their goal. From the article: > if the equiva

Yes, and the people who prioritized the 16-bit size were OK with Japanese looking ridiculous in order to achieve their goal. From the article: > if the equivalent symptom was happening with English text, ιҭ wѳuld bє lѳѳκιng sѳmєҭЋιng lικє ҭЋιs. From a page linked by the article, "I Can Text You A Pile of Poo, But I Can’t Write My Name": > To help English readers understand the absurdity of this premise, consider that the Latin alphabet (used by English) and the Cyrillic alphabet (used by Russian) are both derived from Greek. No native English speaker would ever think to try “Greco Unification” and consolidate the English, Russian, German, Swedish, Greek, and other European languages’ alphabets into a single alphabet. If there had been a proposal to sacrifice English in order to cram Unicode into a certain code space size, is there any question that the people on the panel whose first language was English would have quashed it? But people who might have spoken out for Japanese, or for Indian languages, etc. were seemingly not in a position to do anything.

jefftk 5y ago
Greco Unification wouldn't have been a priority because it couldn't have saved enough bits to matter.
- rectang 5y ago
  Yes, of course — but the point is that native English speakers would have blocked such an absurd proposal no matter what. Han Unification is just as absurd and just as unacceptable to a native Japanese speaker as Greco Unification would be to a native English speaker. But Han Unification went through because native Japanese speakers were not in a position to block it. Representation matters.
  - verall 5y ago
    Were they? Or were they worried that their characters would be the ones given 4 bytes, and unifying means not squabbling with China and Korea over who goes first? It's not like Japan was not a technical center at the time. Shift-JIS is still around.
    - rectang 5y ago
      (EDIT: for screen reader users, a translation follows.) ¢σηѕι∂єяιηg тнє нιѕтσяι¢αℓ αηтιραтну вєтωєєη נαραη αη∂ ¢нιηα ιт'ѕ ρяєρσѕтєяσυѕ тнαт тнє נαραηєѕє ωσυℓ∂ υηιℓαтєяαℓℓу ѕα¢яιƒι¢є тнєιя ¢υℓтυяє ιη ѕυ¢н α ωαу. (EDIT: Considering the historical antipathy between Japan and China it's preposterous that the Japanese would unilaterally sacrifice their culture in such a way.)

jefftk 5y ago

Greco Unification wouldn't have been a priority because it couldn't have saved enough bits to matter.

rectang 5y ago
Yes, of course — but the point is that native English speakers would have blocked such an absurd proposal no matter what. Han Unification is just as absurd and just as unacceptable to a native Japanese speaker as Greco Unification would be to a native English speaker. But Han Unification went through because native Japanese speakers were not in a position to block it. Representation matters.
- verall 5y ago
  Were they? Or were they worried that their characters would be the ones given 4 bytes, and unifying means not squabbling with China and Korea over who goes first? It's not like Japan was not a technical center at the time. Shift-JIS is still around.
  - rectang 5y ago
    (EDIT: for screen reader users, a translation follows.) ¢σηѕι∂єяιηg тнє нιѕтσяι¢αℓ αηтιραтну вєтωєєη נαραη αη∂ ¢нιηα ιт'ѕ ρяєρσѕтєяσυѕ тнαт тнє נαραηєѕє ωσυℓ∂ υηιℓαтєяαℓℓу ѕα¢яιƒι¢є тнєιя ¢υℓтυяє ιη ѕυ¢н α ωαу. (EDIT: Considering the historical antipathy between Japan and China it's preposterous that the Japanese would unilaterally sacrifice their culture in such a way.)