Re: [office] Suggestion for bullet numbering

[Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com>]

Originally sent 17 March: got mailing list errors...

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> On Monday 10 March 2003 18:49, Philip Boutros wrote:
> > Hi David
> > 
> > The glyphs associated with Unicode characters are well defined. Code points, like "25A0 (BLACK SQUARE)", exist for all the symbols you describe. 
> Certainly.
> 
> > Given this, is there really a need to add an extra set?
> > If KWord chooses a mapping from its generic bullets to Unicode characters 
> > and supports this mapping on import and export then there would be no data 
> > loss to and from the open office format. 
> >
> >
> > One issue is that there are several things in Unicode that look like a "small circle" but have different code points. Same for squares, arrows, etc. 
> 
> Exactly, that's the problem. A filter, or another word processor, will never know
> if it handles all the possible cases, simply because there are too many
> possibilities.
> Without starting OO or looking into an existing, can you tell which Unicode
> codes it's going to use, for those 8 bullets it offers? I guess not - which means
> one would have to do this by a "reverse-engineer" method (save and inspect).
> 
> What about the following compromise? The file format isn't changed,
> but the documentation for it lists the unicode chars used for those
> common bullets. That way a filter can easily know which if()s it has to write
> (err I mean switch/case ;).

I think this compromise is best.  Of course it assumes that there will indeed 
be a Unicode glyph for every bullet type a word proc app wants to use. I guess 
even if not, an app can extend the set by using the private use area, or some 
other dodgy trick.



-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
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