[swift-evolution] [Proposal] Refining Identifier and Operator Symbology

[Xiaodi Wu]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 4:32 PM, Jonathan S. Shapiro <
jonathan.s.shapiro at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 1:10 PM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
>> A few other thoughts:
>>
>> * One of our (or at least my) overarching goals for this proposal is to
>> refine identifier and operator sets by moving away from an ad-hoc
>> character-by-character approach to a systematic treatment that relies on
>> well-defined criteria to select blocks of characters for inclusion.
>>
>
> I completely agree with this, up to the point where you wrote "select
> blocks". That doesn't seem to be the way things are selected in the Unicode
> universe.
>
> We can choose to adopt blocks as an interim measure, but we should not
> loose sight of the notion that this should eventually be property-driven.
>
> * Particularly if the community insists on emoji being identifiers, we
>> will have to critically evaluate how to proceed on that in tandem with
>> operators, because there exist emojified operators and arrows, and certain
>> emoji are encoded in blocks that are otherwise symbols, which Unicode is
>> likely to deem as operators in the future.
>>
>
> This is not correct. The current view in the UAX31 discussion is that
> emojis and pictographics should be excluded from *both* types of
> identifiers so that individual programming languages can make
> language-specific choices.
>

This proposed approach raises some issues with apparent inconsistency as
well as forward compatibility issues. What I'm saying is that today, among
a chunk of symbols which Unicode may deem to be operators, there will be
some with emoji variants and others without. It seems kinda arbitrary to
exclude specific arrows or specific dingbats from valid operator characters
on the criterion that they have an emoji variant. For instance, if curly
leftwards arrow has an emoji variant but curly upwards arrow does not, one
is considered an invalid operator but the other is valid? Now, going
forward, if an existing codepoint is today part of IDC_Start but tomorrow
gains an emoji variant, what happens then?

The main current problem is that there is no clear-cut Unicode property
> covering Emojis at the present time, which is something that needs to be
> resolved over in Unicode-land. There is a list given in the antique texty
> UCD file format, but it isn't part of the XML formulation of the UCD
> database. I'll be generating a proposed update shortly, and when I have
> that I can provide a working list in the form of a C file that can be used
> by Swift.
>
> I have a mild preference that emojis should live in conventional
> identifiers if they are adopted.
>
>
>>  Moreover, IIUC, certain codepoints can be either emoji or non-emoji
>> symbols and variant selectors can specify which they are...
>>
>
> Can you expand on this and (hopefully) point me at the appropriate spot in
> one of the Unicode TRs?
>
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> Jonathan
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20161021/41090f90/attachment.html>