I will add to Eric Brunner and Michael Everson's exchange on
the needs of lesser-used languages that there are several of us
that are very much concerned for this, though we may see
different sides of the problem and feels it's most important to
push in different ways. Let's acknowledge and be encouraged by
those concerns we share in common.
For my part, I support lots of people using Windows and other
MS products, not because I think that's the best solution for
them, but because that's what they've chosen to use. As Michael
indicated, we in SIL have frequently and for many years created
8-bit codepages to meet the needs of users working with
minority languages. With the advent of Unicode support in MS
products as of Office 97, we've encountered numerous problems
with our custom codepages because MS software is enforcing the
standards it supports more rigourously. For that reason, I
can't wait for us to put those 8-bit codepages behind us and
get on with a standard that is adequate for all. (Yes, I know
it's not there yet, but I am trying to do my part to change
that.) For me, this can't happen soon enough.
In the mean time, though, we continue to provide new 8-bit
solutions where there is a need. These don't always work as
nicely as I wish they would in commercially-available apps, but
there's not a lot I can do about that but to try to find
workarounds. Convincing a standards body to recognise such an
8-bit codepage for a minority language is not likely to be a
solution to this because it is the software developers who
ultimately decide which of these they're going to support, and
not many are going to add support for a confusing and extensive
array of codepages which are very unfamiliar to them and which
represent very small markets. We can add support for these to
our own software, and we do, but when those users still want to
publish documents using Word or Publisher or whatever, we're at
the mercy of the commercial developer.
So, I push for the adoption of those standards that will cover
the needs of *all* languages, I continue to implement custom,
legacy solutions in the meantime, and I simply try to find ways
to deal with it when these solutions don't work as well as we'd
like.
Peter
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