Archaic scripts (was: Re: New version:
draft-ietf-idna-tables-01.txt)
John C Klensin
klensin at jck.com
Wed May 7 13:58:30 CEST 2008
(sorry, should have changed the subject line earlier)
--On Tuesday, 06 May, 2008 21:08 -0700 Paul Hoffman
<phoffman at imc.org> wrote:
> At 10:37 PM -0400 5/6/08, Vint Cerf wrote:
>> Can we also hear from others on this please?
>
> Historic scripts are like symbols. I agree with the current
> position of banning the symbol blocks because they won't be
> used. I think we can make the same determination for historic
> scripts. If we leave them in, it's no big deal.
Symbols are not used to write the words of languages, living or
dead.
Symbols are not classified as "letters" by anyone I know of and,
in particular, do not have Unicode General Categories "L*".
You may or may not find those distinctions between symbols and
letters in historical scripts persuasive relative to what should
be permitted by the protocol, but I believe it is clear that
they are not the same thing and hence that analogies do not
automatically apply.
john
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