[jats-list] Re: Use of STIX font characters

[Evan Owens <eowens@xxxxxxx>]

As part of the team organizing the STIX project, I would like to point out
that the Private Use Area codes in STIX is in effect a waiting area for
characters that we hope will eventually become part of the Unicode standard.
Over the life of the STIX project, the group has collaborated with others to
expand Unicode.   What the future plans are for STIX PUA values has not been
discussed by that group recently; I have asked for a discussion and will
report back here.

Wendell's comments about documentation are spot on: if you choose to use
"private" characters, you need to document what you are doing for your own
protection and for communication with your business partners.  Using the STIX
set of Unicode PUA values directly in your XML files would in effect make your
XML files have a hidden dependency on a specification that is not declared in
the content.  That was the motivation for the NLM / JATS <private-char>
element.

I do agree that the JATS documentation needs improvement in this area. As I am
on both committees (JATS and STIX), I will share this with my colleagues and
take this on as a homework assignment.

Evan Owens
American Institute of Physics

-----Original Message-----
Re: Use of STIX font characters (Archiving v3)
	101 by: Wendell Piez

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Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:30:07 -0500
To: jats-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [jats-list] Use of STIX font characters (Archiving v3)
Message-ID: <4F1F14CF.6020905@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Dear Simon,

Although this isn't my area of expertise, I spoke with colleagues about this
(and please accept their apologies for not responding themselves, which they
are unable to do at the moment).

While I can't address this authoritatively, I think the simple fact is that
any use of the Unicode PUA must be understood, in the nature of it, to be
subject to negotiation by parties to interchange. That's what it's for and
indeed why it's there -- so Unicode has a place for ad hoc local extension,
which by definition means that someone else might not understand it or indeed
might have a different use for it. So the first thing is that while you are
free to use STIX and "encouraged" to do so (as the documentation of
private-char puts it), you shouldn't necessarily assume that STIX offers you
anything like a free ride. It's just a vehicle you can use, and as such it
might be helpful to you and to any partners who also want to use it. So feel
free to use it, but also document your usage and be ready to explain it.

On the other hand, I dare say the language of the standard (in the guidelines
on private-char and possibly elsewhere) could be updated and clarified, since
(as I understand it) this corner hasn't received much recent attention. I'm
sure the committee would be receptive to any questions regarding it, or for
that matter to suggestions from you or anyone on whether and how this should
be done.

I hope this helps,
Wendell

On 1/19/2012 10:37 AM, Newton, Simon - Edinburgh wrote:
> Dear fellow subscribers,
>
> The element reference manual entry for<private-char>  state that "This
> Suite has been designed [to support] ...the use of entities defined by
> the STIX project (http://www.ams.org/STIX/)", but there is no example
> to illustrate the use of a STIX character. Each STIX character has a
> Private Use Area (PUA) code point... for example that for "Chemistry:
> converging bond" is&E0D1;. So, is it correct to say that one can
> simply use the STIX code points in this way in an NLM file (i.e. there
> is no need to use<private-char>  combined with glyph images)?
>
> Many thanks - Simon.
>
>
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