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

[William_J_G Overington]

> I should have been more careful and precise: after discussion on the 
> email lists had made clear that your proposal would not gain the 
> consensus needed to be adopted as part of Unicode, and after repeated 
> attempts to float the idea were  met with the same responses of 
> opposition to the idea, and after repeated requests by the list 
> administrator not to continue discussion of a proposal that had been 
> consistently failed to garner support, further discussion of the topic 
> was banned.

The ban was imposed by a fictional character, not by a named officer of 
Unicode Inc., so the ban is unfair. The ban has not been imposed by the 
Unicode Technical Committee. So it is not within the stated rules.

Looking back I feel that I made a mistake in the way that I presented 
the idea.

I looked at the idea from a pure mathematics perspective. So I started 
with a very basic trivial case. Asking if it is snowing. So yes, in a 
thought experiment, that message can be sent as one character and 
localized at the receiving end into another language. A reply can be 
sent as one character from that remote location and localized on the 
display device of the original sender.

So build on that trivial case.

Part of the culture in England is to talk about the weather. The weather 
in England is very changeable, due to its geographical location both 
near a large land area and a large ocean.

So, to  explore the idea, I had dialogue through the language barrier 
about the weather.

Alas, lots of people do not think in that pure mathematics way and so 
maybe the idea seemed trivial.

I am not a linguist. I am interested in languages but I am not good at 
them. My background is in applied physics and mathematics.

Back in 2016, with progress in the doldrums, I decided to try to write a 
novel to put my ideas over. I brought back some story characters from 
some short stories that I wrote in the late 1990s. I had been to 
Creative Writing classes in 1997, gaining two certificates. These are at 
level 2 in the English qualification framework and are regarded as each 
equivalent to 0.2 of a GCSE subject qualification. I used what I had 
learned about Creative Writing to start the novel with action.

I published chapters on the web as I progressed, not always in numerical 
order. There was no overall plan, but I enjoyed writing it and it is 
deposited in The British Library where it is conserved. I completed the 
novel in February 2019. I missed writing it, so I started a sequel, 
which is a work in progress, with quite a lot of chapters already 
published on the web. Free to read, no registration required or 
requested. The webspace hosted on a server run by PlusNet PLC, not 
hosted on my computer.

Yet the research in the novel is real. For example, Chapter 21 of the 
first novel, the email to which reference is made is one that in real 
life was actually sent to me by a linguist.

There is also an author note after Chapter 21.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/novel_plus.htm


> As far as  I know, no proposal document has been submitted to and 
> taken up by the Unicode Technical Committee, but I am quite sure that, 
> if a proposal were put on the agenda for a UTC meeting, it would not 
> be accepted.

I have tried. The gatekeeper, no name stated, I do not know who he or 
she is, has refused to add the documents to the Current Document 
Register. I am just told that it is 'out of scope' bur no explanation 
for that ruling. So maybe nobody on the committee knows about this 
continual blocking of ideas.

Well, once there was such a document on the agenda but it got nowhere. I 
cannot remember if any decision was actually made or whether it was just 
left undecided. That was years ago.

What concerns me is that even before I have written a new proposal 
document, you are quite sure that it would not be accepted by the 
Unicode Technical Committee. I opine that there should be a fair 
assessment, based on the present state of the research, not prejudiced 
by opinions of twelve years ago. The Unicode Technical Committee once 
turned down emoji, then a few years later changed its mind. So given a 
fair chance to present my ideas and a fair assessment, the idea could 
become accepted.

>> 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…

> So, what I hear you now saying is that your proposal for localizable 
> sentences does not need your proposed ‘text’ table. Then what is the 
> point of the proposed ‘text’ table?

I am not saying that at all. I said that the font does not get 
transported with the message. The font would be resident in the 
receiving equipment ready to be used in converting the incoming binary 
encoded data of the email to the glyphs for the local display in the 
language for which the receiving equipment is set up.

>> The 'text' table would have far wider application that just 
>> localizable sentences.
> No usage scenario has been presented suggesting a ‘text’ table would 
> be useful in text-display implementations.

Well, there was a call for ideas and I have put an idea forward. There 
could be applications in text to speech for emoji and other symbols.

By the way, an administrative note. There seems to be something peculiar 
happening with the emails that I am sending to the list. Twice now an 
email has not got into the archive nor me receiving a copy. After a 
while I post it again and suddenly two copies appear in the archive and 
arrive here. Quite peculiar.

William Overington

Wednesday 12 May 2021

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