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Unicode 13.0

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Re: Unicode 13.0

#71

Post by tialaramex »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #54
magicalhippo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And emojis, don't forget about the all-important emojis.

Emoji: It's like Kanji, only without agreed upon semantic meaning or pronunciation. I pity historians of the future who have to try and decipher this garbage.

Ha, imagine if some idiots designed a whole country so that its correct functioning depended upon trying to decipher the meaning of symbols which lack semantic meaning decades or even centuries later.

Oh wait, that's the United States of America. What does constitute a "well regulated militia" and how exactly did those symbols come to mean people you wouldn't trust with a sharp stick are allowed semi-automatic hand guns?

Symbols mean whatever people want them to mean, that's the extent to which Humpty is right when he lectures Alice. Whether it's an Eggplant emoji or "Ugandan discussions" the symbol is not the meaning of the symbol.

Re: Unicode 13.0

#73

Post by robjan »

ken wrote: post #57
chrisseaton wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So how far off is Unicode from being 'done'? Do you think human written language is ‘done’ and will never evolve?

I think that most of the changes in Unicode 13 are not from the evolution of human written language. I don't know anyone who's ever written "blueberries" by drawing a picture of some blueberries in the middle of their text.

From the perspective of a person who uses an alphabetical language, such as English, sure Unicode can be "done". But if your language is based on ideograms, like Chinese, then it'll never be "done". As words are created they need to be encoded.

Re: Unicode 13.0

#74

Post by [deleted] »

taejo wrote: post #21
russellallen wrote: post #2

> Unicode 13.0 adds 5,930 characters, for a total of 143,859 characters. These additions include 4 new scripts, for a total of 154 scripts, as well as 55 new emoji characters. So how far off is Unicode from being 'done'? At what point will they be able to stop adding characters and scripts?

German, a European language that has been more or less standardized for several centuries, with a Latin-based alphabet, added a new letter (ẞ) to its alphabet in 2017. As long as that continues to happen, Unicode will have to add new characters, even if no more ancient scripts are discovered and no new writing systems are developed for currently unwritten languages.

[deleted]

Re: Unicode 13.0

#75

Post by pmarreck »

nradov wrote: post #66
ken wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that most of the changes in Unicode 13 are not from the evolution of human written language. I don't know anyone who's ever written "blueberries" by drawing a picture of some blueberries in the middle of their text.

Emojis literally are an evolution in human written language. They started with youth texting and are now showing up in business emails. I predict that within 50 years we'll see emojis as a routine component of New York Times articles.

I'm not going to hold my breath on this one. Emojis have an air of informality that is not appropriate in many circumstances. Imagine writing a death notice with emojis

Re: Unicode 13.0

#76

Post by pmarreck »

rbanffy wrote: post #8
tambre wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once people stop needing and/or inventing new characters and scripts.

"214 graphic characters that provide compatibility with various home computers from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s and with early teletext broadcasting standards" This part is dear to me, as I helped craft it. It includes 2x3 videotext mosaic characters that will make it much easier to draw large text have have better quality charts in text terminal interfaces. And, of course, the ability to properly encode documents…

Do these... do these include the old Commodore 64 metacharacters/symbols??

Re: Unicode 13.0

#77

Post by JdeBP »

bhaak wrote: post #12
rbanffy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"214 graphic characters that provide compatibility with various home computers from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s and with early teletext broadcasting standards" This part is dear to me, as I helped craft it. It includes 2x3 videotext mosaic characters that will make it much easier to draw large text have have better quality charts in text terminal interfaces. And, of course, the ability to properly encode documents…

The niche audience of terminal based games will also be thankful forever to you and the rest of the people that got those characters into Unicode.

They might be interested in Unscii, too. It has been updated in light of Unicode 13.

* http://pelulamu.net/unscii/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18478350)

Re: Unicode 13.0

#79

Post by JdeBP »

pmarreck wrote: post #75
nradov wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emojis literally are an evolution in human written language. They started with youth texting and are now showing up in business emails. I predict that within 50 years we'll see emojis as a routine component of New York Times articles.

I'm not going to hold my breath on this one. Emojis have an air of informality that is not appropriate in many circumstances. Imagine writing a death notice with emojis

Well one could use U+1303F.

But you wait until Maya script gets into Unicode. You'll have at least three different Maya codepoints for death. (-:

Re: Unicode 13.0

#80

Post by NelsonMinar »

jcranmer wrote: post #47
russellallen wrote: post #2

> Unicode 13.0 adds 5,930 characters, for a total of 143,859 characters. These additions include 4 new scripts, for a total of 154 scripts, as well as 55 new emoji characters. So how far off is Unicode from being 'done'? At what point will they be able to stop adding characters and scripts?

I believe all scripts that are in extant use today are complete; if not, the missing extant scripts are down to the scripts with very few literate people (thousands or fewer). Many of the additions today, barring emoji, are covering historical usage. This includes things like Medieval scribal annotations, a different set of numbers for the Ottomans, and the Mayan script. It will still be over a decade for the histori…

I think that's a good framework to think about Unicode being "done". But even extant scripts aren't done; consider the Bopomofo additions here in Unicode 13. And it's not clear what "done" even means for Chinese characters.
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