Moving Right Along on the Inclusions Table...

[Mark Davis]

I agree.

On 12/20/06, Kenneth Whistler <kenw at sybase.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Ethiopic word space, please. It is used as we use hyphens, and the
> > use of hyphen for that purpose is unknown to them.
>
> I disagree on that one. It is basically a word separator,
> derived from the even earlier inscription rule "|" separator,
> and isn't a hyphen.
>
> And it is largely being replaced in modern Ethiopian printed
> materials simply with a SPACE. There are Ethiopian input
> methods that let users cycle between a regular Latin-font-based
> SPACE, a double-wide Ethiopic font space, and the U+1361 ETHIOPIC
> WORDSPACE characters (which for those on this list not familiar
> with Ethiopic, looks like a square-dotted ":").
>
> See, e.g.:
>
> http://www.abyssiniacybergateway.net/mule/punct.html
>
> http://www.ethiopians.com/daniel.html
>
> So I think it is functionally much closer to a SPACE than a
> hyphen, and I don't see a compelling argument for making it
> an exception for Ethiopic punctuation in the inclusion
> list. Unlike the geresh and gershayim for Hebrew, it isn't
> an essential component needed to build words in recognizable
> forms.
>
> Now I know Daniel Yacob has asked that Ethiopian ":" be
> treated as a connector for identifiers, as it would be
> a more naturally readable way for Ethiopians to string
> together words for multiword identifiers, a la
> the underscore in C: multiple_word_identifier_example.
>
> But I think *that* discussion belongs in the realm of specialized
> syntax extensions for programming languages, much the way
> "_" is handled, for example. The fact that the underscore
> "_" is commonly used in programming language identifiers
> to string together words into single identifiers,
> particularly for (formal) languages which don't distinguish
> case (and hence make InterCaps impractical), doesn't
> automatically mean that "_" gets carried forward into
> constructing internet identifiers for Latin (or other
> scripts). I think the argument is identical for Ethiopic ":",
> and stronger, if anything, because that particular bit of
> punctuation is confusable with an important syntax element
> in URLs.
>
> "-" is the only exceptional bit of punctuation that gets
> carried forward, I think, and it has to be simply because
> of prior use in ASCII-based domain names.
>
> --Ken
>
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