[MPEG-OTSPEC] New AHG mandates and other news!

[William_J_G Overington]

> Your original idea of localizable sentences, as I recall, involved 
> assigning Unicode code points to particular semantic propositions, or 
> “sentences”.

Yes, that was the original idea, back in 2009.

Research has continued and developed. There are several possible 
encodings in the research, all involve sequences: two are markup, one 
involves the exclamation mark and ordinary digits, the other involves an 
integral sign and circled digits - harder to write a message, but more 
robust.

The third possible encoding needs a regular Unicode/ ISO-IEC 10646 
encoding but would be unambiguous, highly robust and clearly free of 
concerns about proprietary rights. Yet it needs agreement from Unicode 
Inc. and ISO/IEC 10646 committees.

> Unicode has stated clearly it is not interested in pursuing that idea 
> and banned further  discussion of that idea from its email lists.

Actually no. A fictional character with email address root at unicode.org 
banned discussion. It was not a statement by an official named officer 
of Unicode Inc. acting officially. So its validity is highly 
questionable. If Unicode Inc. wishes to ban discussion of localizable 
sentence technology then it could officially state that, but Unicode 
Inc. has not done that. No notice of disapproval for encoding 
localizable sentences has been made.

Rather, the banning by a fictional character is like a Unicode version 
of The Luxembourg Compromise.

The fictional character did not state any reason why localizable 
sentences are unsuitable for encoding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourg_compromise

I have not been given a fair opportunity to state my case and have it 
debated.

QID emoji has been treated as a serious proposal and a Public Review has 
taken place.

My proposal for localizable sentences being encoded is far more robust, 
and, I opine, should be treated seriously and assessed properly on a 
"sauce for pasta is sauce for rice" basis.

So there is nothing OFFICIAL about localizable sentences from Unicode 
Inc. of which I am aware.

So I keep trying to get my proposal for localizable sentences considered 
by Unicode Inc..

> I don’t think you should be trying to use this list as a back door to 
> revisit the same idea.

I am not using this list as a back door. There has been a call for ideas 
and I have put one forward. From what you now write it appears that the 
'name' table will not do what I am proposing in what, for purposes of 
discussion, can be called the 'text' table, because, as far as I am 
aware, that name is not already in use for an OpenType table.

Also, I am entitled to try to get my invention implemented.

So I am in favour of having the 'text' table and Peter is not, so that 
is 1 vote for and 1 vote against at this time.

So the proposal goes forward and hopefully other people will express a 
view and a consensus will emerge.

> Again, there’s an unstated premise of this idea that the font will get 
> transported with the message.

No, there is no such premise.

There is as far as I am aware no premise or presumption when sending any 
email message that a font will get transported with the message.

My idea is that the message list will be an international standard and 
that localization will take place automatically in the receiving device 
when a language-independent encoded message is received, using a 
decoding list local to the recipient.

I have recently decided that all localizable sentences that are encoded 
shall have a language-independent glyph - at one time I considered that 
glyphs were not always needed, but I have since changed my mind on this 
as my research has proceeded.

I have replied to the comments made. The 'text' table would have far 
wider application that just localizable sentences.

William Overington

Tuesday 11 May 2021


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