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Unicode 13.0

unicode.org

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Re: Unicode 13.0

#81

Post by JdeBP »

pmarreck wrote: post #76
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…

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

You can read the explanation in the proposal, which will tell you everything, at http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19025-terminals-prop.pdf .

Re: Unicode 13.0

#82

Post by Chlorus »

Found some additional info on the legacy computing symbols - chapter 22, page 856 - https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/ch22.pdf

"Support for these legacy computing symbols includes 212 characters added in Version 13.0 to provide compatibility with a wide range of early home computers, or “microcomputers,” manufactured from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. These symbols also cover the teletext broadcasting standard originally developed in the early 1970s, and the Minitel standard developed in the 1980s. This collection of early microcomputer symbols includes support for the character sets of Amstrad CPC, Apple 8-bit, Atari 8 and 16- bit, Commodore 8 and 16-bit, MSX, Yamaha, RISC OS, and Tandy"

Re: Unicode 13.0

#83

Post by ken »

robjan wrote: post #73
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.

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.

Again, that's great and I understand that (I've studied Japanese), but that's only part of the new version. They're not adding pictures of "mousetrap" and "olives" and "toilet plunger" because any existing language needs to write these.

Furthermore, I'm really starting to question the way CJK is encoded. We don't make every English word a separate codepoint. 97% of these CJK ideographs are just different combinations of the same few radicals. Korean seems especially weird, as they have both individual radicals and every precomposed triple (in a block that's been rearranged once or twice, on the basis that nobody was really using it yet). I'm not saying we should nix all precomposed Hanzi/Kanji, exactly, because that's a very convenient way for programs to handle text, but it seems like this system is becoming increasingly awkward for non-western languages.

I feel there's a fundamental flaw when our "universal" text encoding system can't handle the regular creation of new words in a well-understood way, for languages spoken by 1/3rd of the world's population. It's like we're issuing hardware patches for a software problem.

Re: Unicode 13.0

#84

Post by rbanffy »

goto11 wrote: post #69
rbanffy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unified rendering is not really a goal of Unicode. That's better left to the individual platform providers, who have to balance this against keeping their own user experience consistent over time and across devices.

Yes, this is why I don't think Unicode is the right vehicle for emojis in the long run. They should be treated like graphics, not characters. When they were really simple icons, it made sense to treat them as characters. But today they are detailed illustrations.

They have semantic value and can be included in document as characters. It makes sense to keep them as characters.

Re: Unicode 13.0

#85

Post by rbanffy »

pmarreck wrote: post #76
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…

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

Yes. PETSCII (and ATASCII) were some of the first characters that were added to the proposal (before I arrived at the group)

Re: Unicode 13.0

#86

Post by nfoz »

slipheen wrote: post #68
pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it not Unicode policy not to include logos/trademarks as characters? What changed? (This is why there is no Apple logo or character for TAFKATAFKAP, for one thing.)

They discussed the trademark issue a bit in their filing- https://creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/CC-Un... The CC logo and icons as a matter of trademark law are governed by CC’s trademark policy, which specifies conditions of their use “in a manner reasonable to the medium and context.” According to Unicode criteria for encoding symbols, a trademark weakens, but does not disqualify, the case for encod…

Would it be theoretically possible for CC to change its trademark policy on those symbols in a way that affects documents that use them?

Re: Unicode 13.0

#88

Post by ken »

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.

Now you're getting into the definition of "writing". I would say I've only seen emoji typed, not written. (Before anyone asks: yes, I've seen cuneiform written. I have some interesting friends.) If you count any visual communication that is typed on a phone under the greater umbrella of "writing", then we could also include colors, styles, orientation, funny fonts, image memes, animation, etc. There's no end to the possible visual communication that people might want to transmit digitally.

Where do you draw the line? I draw it at "anything in or using a language that people might write in the absence of computers, which they would then reasonably want to store and transmit using a computer". I don't include "any possible visual communication that can occur using a computer". That's far too broad to define "text", or be part of any existing "language", which are the stated goals of Unicode.

Re: Unicode 13.0

#89

Post by weregiraffe »

ken wrote: post #59

> Black Cat: a combination of Cat and ⬛ Black Large Square I predict that within 10 years, some group will start a new simplified text encoding standard which is just for text .

And I predict that within 10 years after that, they'll add emojis to their new standard.

Re: Unicode 13.0

#90

Post by 2T1Qka0rEiPr »

jfk13 wrote: post #39
2T1Qka0rEiPr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. How would this solve the problem? Whilst looking different is clearly an issue (e.g. the gun being depicted a water gun), I'm not sure what your solution would look like? Images hosted somewhere? You'd get consistency, but you'd lose universality. It goes without saying, but you can use Emoji practically _anywhere_ that support text. That's huge.

Although it depends on having the same level of emoji support across all the relevant systems/devices. If you send a message with Unicode 13 emoji to me and I read it on my phone that's stuck on Unicode 10, it's not much use. Whereas if these silly little images were represented by links to a canonical repository somewhere, newly-added images could automatically work even in pre-existing systems. On the other hand, t…

Yeh, so the current system seems better, because, although it's versioned, it doesn't need to constantly communicate with some central server. Also, another drawback is fonts need to be updated, but again, I think the benefits outweigh the costs.
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