[r6rs-discuss] on rationale 9.6 Characters and Strings

From: Thomas Lord <lord>
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 01:10:21 -0700

John Cowan wrote:
> I don't have a problem with allowing Scheme systems to have
> implementation-dependent characters over and above Unicode scalar
> values, provided that char->integer assigns them values in excess
> of #x10FFFF.
>

Well, that's good except for the restriction. The draft, on the other
hand,
still says otherwise, does it not?



>> This portion of the rationale is simply confused. The phrase "carries
>> no semantic information at all" is particularly inexplicable (because,
>> of course: sequences of UTF-16 code values have perfectly well-defined
>> semantics!).
>>
>
> Sequences, yes. Individual surrogate characters, no.
>
>

You are abusing the word "semantic" badly. Unpaired surrogates have
plenty of meaning in various contexts. They suffer no shortage of
semantics.

You are using "semantic", incorrectly, as a disguised synonym for
"scalar value" and, even then you state a falsehood (for an unpaired
surrogate at least has *meaning* as the high or low order bits of
a scalar value).

It is really difficult to reply to you with polite restraint because you
make such outrageous yet ultimately nonsensical claims.



>> Not all texts are expressed over a taxonomy of writing systems which has
>> been recognized by the Unicode consortium and, indeed, some texts are
>> understood to be in writing systems that the Unicode consortium has
>> explicitly declined to encode.
>>
>
> Can you give an example? Klingon was rejected for Unicode encoding
> because in fact no one could point to texts in the Klingon language
> written in Klingon script.
>
>



Also rejected by the consortium are distinctions in writing systems that
are widely recognized for some Asian languages. The details of that
controversy hardly seem to matter to the case at hand though -- the
mere existence of the controversy is proof enough of the principle.


-t

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