Re: Unicode and math symbols

[Chris Rowley <C.A.Rowley@open.ac.uk>]

Barbara wrote (or quoted)--

>     the term "character" has been (and still is) used to refer to
>     both a unit of information and a visual shape associated with
>     that unit of information.

For latin/cyrrilic wrting systems, at least, this makes sense to me and
encapsulates much of what is in the Unicode book; but i think it may
be that in some areas (outsiide text) too much emphasis is placed on
being precise about the visual shape (thus it would perhaps have been better
to say ".. and a collection of interchangable visual shapes associated ...".

Note that it does not say that every unit of information should
correspond to a single character (and thus to a Unicode slot).

Nor does it say that every glyph is the visual realisation of a single
unit of information; this is perhaps relevant to where I would disagree
with those who wish to put all math symbols into Unicode sots.

>      1. A character conveys distinctions in meaning.  A character has no
>         intrinsic appearance.
> 
>      2. A glyph conveys distinctions in form.  A glyph has no
>         intrinsic meaning.

My epistemological level is nowhere near accomodating beasts such as
these in its zoo.  It conjures up in my mind the idea that we should
communicate by muttering sequences of deeply meaningful 16-bit number
rather than writng meaningless glyphs or uttering meaningless sounds;
why not just code everything by using the Goedel number of each
statement?


Thanks for the enlightenment, Barbara


chris