KATS (Korean Agency for Technology andStandards)'s Comments on the Unicode Codepoints and IDNA Internet-Draft

[Kent Karlsson]

John C Klensin wrote:
> Part of what is at issue when we talk about "internationalizing
> LDH" is the question of what, actually, constitutes a "letter"
> for our purposes -- a conclusion that might be different from
> the Unicode one because our needs are slightly different.  From
> the perspective of the Korean experts, at least as I understand
> it, the Jamo should not be treated as "letters", but as "parts
> of letters".

Well, depends on what you mean by "letter" here. If you mean in
a transferred meaning as "allowed in IDN as letter-like", then yes.

But if you by "letter" actually mean alphabetic letter, then no.
The single-letter Jamos *ARE* the letters of the Hanguls script.
The multi-letter Jamos and the precomposed syllables, and to
a large extent the compatibility Hangul letters, are compositions
of the basic Jamo letters (and sometimes the pseudo-letter FILLERs).

> The writing system is primarily syllabic, not
> alphabetic in the traditional western sense.

It's alphabetic. But the letters of an orthographic syllable
are arranged in a syllable block. That does not make it any
less alphabetic. And in an ideal world, only the single-letter
Jamos would have been encoded for Hangul (plus the Hangul tone
marks); no multi-letter Jamos, no precomposed syllables, no
compatibility Hangul letters.

> Unicode has
> recognized that by encoding the syllables, or at least 11
> thousand or so of them (by contrast with, e.g., Latin or
> Greek-derived scripts, where syllables are definitely not
> encoded, although they clearly exist).

And had one used the same model as for Hangul, one would have
encoded a large number of precomposed "modern" syllables...
(Not something to be recommended.)

>  Given a basically
> syllabic writing system,

It's alphabetic! Purely, and quite minimalisticly alphabetic.



However, I agree with KATS (and with Michael) that the
Hangul Jamo best be prohibited for use *in IDN*. The precomposed
Hangul syllables are sufficient for modern official Hangul
orthography, and thus sufficient for IDN purposes. It blocks
historic spellings, and some dialectal (modern) use. However,
not everything even in English or French are allowed in IDN.

	/kent k