Adding RAINBOW FLAG to Unicode

[Noah Slater]

Thanks for summarising that in an email, Doug.

I really wish they'd provided a justification for this statement! :) I
guess that this is the right list for a UTC officer to give some sort of
feedback.

On Sun, 28 Jun 2015 at 21:23 Doug Ewell <doug at ewellic.org> wrote:

> Noah Slater wrote:
>
> > Sorry to be a pain. I mentioned I looked up the minutes and couldn't
> > find anything apropos.
> >
> > Could someone explain the rational behind 134-C2 and how it might
> > apply to the rainbow flag proposal ?
>
> The following is informal and dilettante, since only a UTC officer can
> give a formal rationale for what happened in this 2013 meeting.
>
> According to the minutes, consensus decision 134-C2, by itself, says
> only: "Consensus: The Unicode Technical Committee does not approve
> encoding a United States flag symbol." That refers only to the one
> symbol proposed in L2/12-094.
>
> But the same discussion also led to an action item, 134-A5: "Action Item
> for Ken Whistler: Add the United States Flag symbol to notices of
> non-approval."
>
> And that notice says, in full (not elided):
>
> "Disposition: The UTC rejected the proposal. The mapping to an existing
> emoji symbol for the US flag is already possible by using pairs of
> regional indicator symbols. Additionally, the domain of flags is
> generally not amenable to representation by encoded characters, and the
> UTC does not wish to entertain further proposals for encoding of symbol
> characters for flags, whether national, state, regional, international,
> or otherwise. References to UTC Minutes: [134-C2], January 28, 2013."
>
> The last clause is the relevant one here: "whether national, state,
> regional, international, or otherwise." The words "or otherwise" could
> be interpreted as saying that no *specific* flag of any kind will be
> encoded in the future as a single character, partly because the domain
> of flags is so open-ended. That would include flags associated with or
> representing specific groups of individuals or social causes.
>
> Now, we know that this is all flexible and subject to momentary change.
> Trying to predict what will and will not be considered "in scope" is
> more difficult today than ever. Perhaps your best bet is simply to write
> and submit a proposal, and see what happens.
>
> --
> Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO ����
>
>
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