Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!gatech!udel!princeton!twg.com!david From: david@twg.com (David S. Herron) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: Announcement--new "Unicode" standard Message-ID: <8699@gollum.twg.com> Date: 27 Feb 91 21:12:45 GMT References: <1991Feb24.164137.11897@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <1991Feb24.175313.10206@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1906@public.BTR.COM> Organization: The Wollongong Group, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 71 In article <1906@public.BTR.COM> thad@public.BTR.COM (Thaddeus P. Floryan) writes: >In article <1991Feb24.175313.10206@Neon.Stanford.EDU> torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie) writes: >> [..crap deleted...] >> I'm glad ASCII is finally being phased out... it's just not >>appropriate for today's international world. > >Get real, guy. MOST of the computer languages are based on the American >language (in some shape, way or form, cryptic though some may be :-) So? >Next thing we know, you're gonna be proposing an Urdu or Sanskrit version >of C or some other language. There's support (limited) (in the ANSI C standard) for using odd character sets to write C. >Think back to why the metrification of the USA failed ... most of the WORLD's >production is in the USA based on OUR standard (crappy though the "English" >system of weights and measures may be). Look.. this "We're American and superior to everybody else" attitude has to stop. Just 'cause we speek an odd form of English, and we all live in luxury (compared to most of the world that is) doesn't us or our way of life any better than anybody else. In the case of computer & the character sets used to communicate with computers ... What kind of gall do we have to say that the limited character set in ASCII is what *EVERYONE* is supposed to use?!? The job of computers is *NOT* to force us to do things the way the computer wants it done, but is to help *US* with our own job. By telling the Germans & Scandinavians they can't put umlauts and that "TH" character into their text we're in effect saying that they have to bow and scrape to every whim of the computer. Put yourself in the place of one of those people. They've been putting all them weird accent marks on their characters all their life. Now they start using computers & can't put 'em there. In French there are a few words for which the accent marks are what distinguishes the two words (The two forms of "la" for instance), and I am sure that this is true for other languages. Telling them that they cannot use those accent marks is a Rude, Crude and Socially Obscene form of societal domination. See my ".signature" for a bowing & scraping I am making in regards to trying to reproduce a French word in ASCII. I would *DEARLY* love to have that look right ... >Sheesh. :-) At least you put a :-)y in there ... ;-) >Thad Floryan [ thad@btr.com (OR) {decwrl, mips, fernwood}!btr!thad ] (BTW: There is "standards work" going on to extend electronic mail to be able to contain more than "just" ASCII text. There is already X.400 which contains all that stuff, but RFC-822 is in the process of being extended to be able to contain multiple body parts & other character sets than ASCII.) David -- <- David Herron, an MMDF & WIN/MHS guy, <- Formerly: David Herron -- NonResident E-Mail Hack <- <- MS-DOS ... The ultimate computer virus.