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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,699cc914522aa7c4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,UTF8 Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!homer!news.glorb.com!news-spur1.glorb.com!news.glorb.com!newspeer1.se.telia.net!se.telia.net!masternews.telia.net.!newsb.telia.net.POSTED!not-for-mail From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Bj=F6rn?= Persson Subject: Re: Wasteful internationalization Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: User-Agent: KNode/0.10.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit Message-ID: Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 19:27:05 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 83.250.96.174 X-Complaints-To: abuse@telia.com X-Trace: newsb.telia.net 1170703625 83.250.96.174 (Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:27:05 CET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:27:05 CET Organization: Telia Internet Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:8976 Date: 2007-02-05T19:27:05+00:00 List-Id: Alexander E. Kopilovich wrote: > Bj?rn Persson wrote: >> what's the point in defining new >>standards if nobody ever starts using the new capabilities? > > Why "nobody"? Unicode provides some reasonable way for mixed-language > texts, so those who need that kind of texts may use it successfully. Yes, and in this case I needed a π, so I wrote one. I couldn't write "pi". The constant Pi isn't new in Ada 2005. What's new is that it is also defined with the name "π", so that was the name I wrote. > But this does not mean that with emergence of Unicode all kinds of text > should be regarded as mixed-language and thus employ Unicode. There is no > such strict alternative for the use of those standards: either everybody > or nobody. Exactly, and there is even software in place that tries to ensure that texts are as readable as possible with old and limited programs. There is UTF-8, and there are algorithms to choose the simplest encoding that can encode the text. The easiest approach would have been to always use UCS-4, but instead programmers have gone to great lengths to make their programs as backwards compatible as possible. >> He's trying to *persuade* >>everyone to go back to ASCII. It was not just information. He stated >>explicitly that everyone should use ASCII. > > And he is certainly right in that. Perhaps you'll see the truth later, > when you encounter Chinese hieroglyphs and Arabic letters in messages that > you are reading. Your brand new Unicode-capable newsreader will give you > pretty pictures of them, you will not have a foggiest idea about their > possible meaning or how they may sound... perhaps you even will not know > in which direction they should be read. Now you're confusing character encodings with human languages. It's true that I can't read Chinese. I can't read it the slightest bit better in Pinyin. Same thing with Arabic: Transliterating Arabic to Latin letters wouldn't help me understand it. This isn't even a hypothetical situation. It has already happened: I've seen a few posts in French around here, and I didn't understand them even though I recognized all the letters. Messing up the French spelling by dropping all the accents to force it into ASCII would not have helped. I didn't write a post in Greek. I used π in its mathematical meaning. I do in fact expect every programmer to recognize π when they see a "pretty picture" of it, and know exactly what it means. -- Björn Persson PGP key A88682FD omb jor ers @sv ge. r o.b n.p son eri nu