RE: DR 11-0002 — WML: The definition of aiueoFullWidth

[Chris Rae]

Hi Murata-san - thanks for the speedy response. Is there any way we could find some subject matter experts to determine what the right answer is (maybe Japan SC34 mirror)? I don't think we can resolve this DR until we find some more detail on the type of resolution.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: eb2mmrt at gmail.com [mailto:eb2mmrt at gmail.com] On Behalf Of MURATA Makoto
Sent: 01 February 2011 17:15
To: e-SC34-WG4 at ecma-international.org
Subject: Re: DR 11-0002 — WML: The definition of aiueoFullWidth

Chris,

We can certainly argue MS Office is correct.

"AIUEO" is a Japanese alphabet.  We have a modern variation and traditional variation.  Full-width hiragana and katakana in Unicode can capture both, while half-width katakana in Unicode (and JIS) can only capture the modern variation.  The difference between these two variations is the two characters mentioned in this DR.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_kana_usage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_kana_orthography

MS Office always follow the modern one for other orderings of the same alphabet.
Meanwhile, in 29500, aiueoFullWidth is based on the traditional variation, while others are based on the modern variation.

Personally, I like the traditional version.  But many Japanese cannot read the two characters omitted in the modern variation.

Cheers,
Makoto <EB2M-MRT at asahi-net.or.jp>