Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!liuida!mailhost!ath From: ath@linkoping.telesoft.se (Anders Thulin) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: Polyglot List Issue (Really: Does Latin-1 cover Western Europe ?) Keywords: \oe, Latin-1, ISO 8859-1 Message-ID: <727@castor.linkoping.telesoft.se> Date: 3 Feb 91 08:13:59 GMT References: <1991Jan29.200653.23928@sq.sq.com> <723@castor.linkoping.telesoft.se> <4363@undis.cs.chalmers.se> Organization: TeleSoft AB, Linkoping, Sweden Lines: 52 In article <4363@undis.cs.chalmers.se> jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se (Alan Jeffrey) writes: >In article <723@castor.linkoping.telesoft.se> ath@linkoping.telesoft.se (Anders Thulin) writes: >>[... left out of Latin-1 due to its being dispensable?...> >If Latin1 is proposed as a standard for (for instance) encoding the >textual material of published books, it's going to have to cope with >people (for example historians, or linguists, or lit. critters) who >need to be able to quote texts from more than 30 years ago. True, but of minor relevance. 8859/1 was (as far as I understand it) intended for interchange of modern langauges - obsolete and obsolescent forms were not included. Is *that* why French isn't there? (And is that why the y with dieresis is there?) >Oh, and my Chambers 20th Century dictionary lists the following words >beginning \ae\ or \oe\ which don't have ae and oe variants: > > \ae sc (the O.E. letter `ash' now written \ae!) > \oe il-de-b\oe uf (a little round window) > \oe illade (an ogle) > >None of these are marked as foreign or obsolete. Of course this was >eight years ago, things may be different now... I'm almost sure you're joking now... I have no quarrel with - it's already in Latin-1. The two last words are obviously French (weren't they marked as such?), which brings me back to the problem I'm really interested in: is an indispensable character/glyph of French? >>ligature really indispensable - I can't help thinking [ ] would >>made its way into the Latin-1/... code tables if it was. > >Hmm, an interesting idea---`if it was useful it would be in the >standard'. Ahh, if only ISO worked that way... I can't help thinking that the Latin-1 code table as well as the others must have been developed in close collaboration with the national standard bodies. Since the French language appears to be rather closely monitored I would expect very loud complaints from the French national standards organizations if characters that were of vital importance to the modern language weren't included *any* of the Latin-n code tables, particularly the one that is claimed to cover the most important Western languages. Or don't they care? Perhaps there's a FRASCII which makes more sense to use?) -- Anders Thulin ath@linkoping.telesoft.se Telesoft Europe AB, Teknikringen 2B, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden