From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,UTF8 X-Google-Thread: 103376,88ed72d98e6b3457 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-10-08 13:44:08 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!in.100proofnews.com!in.100proofnews.com!cycny01.gnilink.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!wn14feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!rwcrnsc53.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F8476FD.1030009@comcast.net> From: "Robert I. Eachus" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Standard Library Interest? References: <3F7F760E.2020901@comcast.net> <3F80AFE4.4010901@comcast.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.34.139.183 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: rwcrnsc53 1065645846 24.34.139.183 (Wed, 08 Oct 2003 20:44:06 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 20:44:06 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 20:44:06 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:494 Date: 2003-10-08T20:44:06+00:00 List-Id: Georg Bauhaus wrote: > Ah well, I'm beginning to see the difficulties, thanks. The Babel > effect won't be stopped by Unicode ;-) What Unicode and ISO 10646 have finally managed to do is associate standard names with characters. As you point out, there are cases where there are many identical glyphs with different names, such as LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, GREEK CAPITAL LETTER A, and CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A. But at least now the Babel effect is well documented. Although there was a lot of resistance to the standard initially for political reasons. As far as I know, the fall of the Soviet Union has ended the problem the Russians had with including some Georgian letters, and the various wars and so on in former Yugoslavia may have ended concerns about some Macedonian characters on the part of the Greeks. And then there is Quebec. To you and I, the concept of going to war over characters in an alphabet may seem strange, but there were a couple of times when it almost came to that. In fact, the Greeks refused to recognize the Republic of Macedonia unless they changed the way the country's name was written in English! I kid you not, the Macadonian and Greek versions of the name were fine, but the Greeks wanted to get the Americans, British and so on to use a different name for the country. I think the political compromise was for the UN to refer to Macedonia as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" in English. I have no idea of what the French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese versions are like. Hmmm. The United Nations site gives: English: Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; FYR of Macedonia French: ex-République yougoslave de Macédoine Spanish: ex República Yugoslava de Macedonia Russian: бывшая югославская Республика Македония Arabic: جمهورية مقدونيا اليوغوسلافية السابقة Chinese: 前南斯拉夫的马其顿共和国 The European Union site: http://europa.eu.int/eurodicautom/Controller gives: English: Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia German: Ehemalige jugoslawische Republik Mazedonien French: Ex-République yougoslave de Macédoine Italian: Ex Repubblica jugoslava di Macedonia all referencing ISO 3166-1:1997 So it seems pretty consistant. -- Robert I. Eachus "Quality is the Buddha. Quality is scientific reality. Quality is the goal of Art. It remains to work these concepts into a practical, down-to-earth context, and for this there is nothing more practical or down-to-earth than what I have been talking about all along...the repair of an old motorcycle." -- from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig