Re: [tlug] Re: Unicode (Was: apache2 setup and japanese)

[Shimpei Yamashita <shimpei@example.com>]

A few questions, from a complete amateur....

On Sat, Jul 12, 2003 at 12:45:28AM +1000,
Jim Breen wrote:
> >> Thanks for that info. (Though I have to apologize for a slight thread 
> >> hijacking here.) Would that mean that the Japanese "manga" and Korean 
> >> "manhwa" would look the same in Unicode, for instance?
> 
> Things don't "look" like anything in Unicode. The look comes from the
> font. You choose the font. You buy a Chinese-style Unicode font where 
> the hanzi look Chinese, or you buy a Japanese-style font. The codes
> stay the same.

Does that mean that a multilingual text document, rendered with a single
Unicode font, may only "look" correct in one Asian language at a time? If so,
does it not mean that Unicode only *pretends* to be context-independent, and
actually depends on the user (which could be the application or the human
being) to provide that context because it fails to provide a context-
presentation mechanism internally?

> Be that as it may, EVERY kanji in JIS X 0208 and JIS X 0212 ended up in
> Unicode 1.0. What is called the "source separation rule" meant that if 
> a kanji/hanzi/hanja pair that would otherwise be unified occurs
> multiply in one of the national standards, then it appears multiply in
> Unicode. Thus all six version of the "ken" kanji, which blind Freddie
> could tell are really the same, are dutifully replicated in Unicode,
> because that's the way they are in JIS X 0208.

That doesn't seem to solve the above problem at all, which involves
*different* countries using different glyphs for the "same" character.

Jim, what I don't quite understand is this: exactly what problem is Unicode
meant to solve anyway? Given that, what rationale went into the decision to
combine certain glyphs between countries that cause caused so much grief among
your opponents? It's easy to dismiss Unicode opponents as nationalist
counter-revolutionaries, but it isn't clear to me (yet) that the Unicode camp
has addressed their grievance adequately.

-- 
Shimpei Yamashita                               http://www.shimpei.org/
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?    -- Steve Wright