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From: sommar@enea.UUCP (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.lang
Subject: Re: accented alphabets and computers
Message-ID: <2293@enea.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 18:27:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: enea.2293
Posted: Mon Sep 21 18:27:31 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Sep-87 10:23:47 EDT
References: <120@quick.COM>
Reply-To: sommar@enea.UUCP(Erland Sommarskog)
Followup-To: comp.std.internat
Organization: ENEA DATA Svenska AB, Sweden
Lines: 40
Xref: mnetor comp.std.internat:261 sci.lang:1452

srg@quick.COM (Spencer Garrett) writes:
>I'm the one who posted the remark about English and Russian being the only
>two languages written using unaccented alphabets.  Perhaps I should have
>made the distinction more clear.  By "unaccented" I meant "written without
>overstrikes" and "sorted one letter at a time in a fixed order".  These
>characteristics make dealing with computers a darn sight easier, and thus
>represent advantages in this context.  By this metric modern English and
>Russian qualify.  

Don't you get the feeling that we are just going round and round in this
discssuion? Since Mr. Garrett seems to have missed a lot of the discussion,
I will have to repeat. English is by no means unique among the latin-written
languages. Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and I guess also Dutch
qualify as well. 

>I don't mean to imply by all this that I think
>other languages are inferior and should be changed or forgotten, but I do
>think this observation helps explain why English is so often used to talk
>to computers even in non-English-speaking countries.  

That has nothing to do with simplicity. It as just a matter of dominating
culture. If French had been the leading language, computers would
have been able to handles accents decently today. (Et, ils avraient parl'e
le fran,cais.)

>The cost of implementing a "superset" standard is unfortunately
>unacceptable.  (Imagine merely doubling the size of all the "text" files
>on your system!)  

And stupid me, thinking we had computers to make things easier and better.
Forever, I will do better with a simple pen or a typewriter. :-)
Of course we can afford a better character standard! We have computers
to serve and help us, not rule and delimit us!


-- 

Erland Sommarskog       
ENEA Data, Stockholm    
sommar@enea.UUCP