Re: Wasteful internationalization

["Alexander E. Kopilovich" <aek@VB1162.spb.edu>]

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.

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.

> 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.

>I'll probably
>ignore him next time he complains to me, but I may intervene if he attacks
>newbies again.

It seems that you are contemplating flames on this topic. Well, I should tell
you that your current position regarding this subject is not strong enough
for reasonably good flaming. Below is just a simple example of the direction
of a possible counter-attack that you may experience:

[flame on]

It isn't enough to update you newsreader - you should update your brains to
compatibility with Internationally Agreed Standard. Well, perhaps you are 
ready for that... updates are relatively easy when there is enough free space
and production runs aren't frequent and are delayable. But why do you think
that others should be equally ready for that? Do you really think that
Internationally Agreed Brain Contents Standard is somehow better than just
American standard?

[flame off]