Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!news
From: john@george.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Hung P. Ho Jr.)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: New USENET header: Language
Message-ID: <1990Dec24.172731.5534@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: 24 Dec 90 17:27:31 GMT
References: <1990Dec22.081718.2109@looking.on.ca> <4ec122f7.1bc5b@pisa.ifs.umich.edu>
Sender: news@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov (Usenet)
Organization: Image Analysis Systems Grp, JPL/NASA
Lines: 30
Nntp-Posting-Host: george.jpl.nasa.gov

In article <4ec122f7.1bc5b@pisa.ifs.umich.edu> rees@citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees) writes:
>In article <1990Dec22.081718.2109@looking.on.ca>, brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
>Right now there is a debate going on in soc.culture.lebanon on the best way
>to write Arabic using a latin script.  That misses the boat, as I see it.
>What we should be doing is sending and displaying actual Arabic characters,
>not some romanised bastardisation.  This has already happened in
>soc.culture.vietnamese, where postings are full of diacriticals following the
>letters they should go over: "da^'u na(.ng" is a poor substitute for real,
>written Vietnamese.

Yes, I agree that the marks next to the letter are not that easy to read
or understand.. But it is the best way we have come up with.. Using
this scheme, If you have a workstation running X or other windows, 
there are preprocessors that can convert these marks into real
Vietnamese characters.  For hard copy, there are Latex/Nroff processors.
On the other hand, for a large percentage of users, they are still
using dumb terminals, for which this scheme will still work.

Your proposal for an automatic language processor is a good idea.
But I think the project would be too big to handle.. Based on the
new ISO works, we will see the standard for special characters
very soon...

Let us know if you success.. Good Luck

                    ._. ._____   ._.		
IAS JETSUN Net      | | | .__ \  | |		JOHN HO, System Administrator
                    | | | |__) | | |		   John@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov
 NASA/CALTECH     __| | | |\__/  | |___		   ..!cit-vax!elroy!john
                /_____| |_|      |_____\	   hho@chaph.usc.edu