From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Tue Nov 29 2005 - 00:27:12 CST
On 29 Nov 2005, at 04:35, Doug Ewell wrote:
>>>>>> Most facts points to that the Unicode/10646 is a human
>>>>>> interface,
>>>>>> not a computer to computer [] interface.
>>
>>> ...I mean saying that "Unicode/10646 is a human interface." It's
>>> a coded character set.
>>
>> I abbreviated "human to human interface and human to computer
>> interface" to "human interface", as I felt that the former was too
>> long. Sorry if some clarity was missed out by that.
>
> 1. I don't see how Unicode, or any other coded character set, can
> be considered a human-to-human interface. Very few humans
> communicate directly with each other by means of character codes.
What about the email you just wrote?
> 2. Coded character sets exist so that computers can deal with
> text. This has to do with input and output, which is human-to-
> computer, but it also has to do with processing and interchange,
> which is computer-to-computer.
I am speaking about the interface required for the processing. The
processing may forward data which is not strictly speaking for the
processing itself. In the given context, low level filesystems need
not know anything about character encodings, as it suffices to use
byte string. One can use character encodings on this low level, and
ot was reoprted one, but not two such systems. There appears to be no
benefit in doing so. So this is a strictly computer-to-computer
interface, even though for debugging pruposes human interfacing
should probably be at hand.
> 3. The original statement sounded as though "Unicode/10646" were
> somehow different from other coded character sets, in terms of
> being human-to-human or computer-to-computer. If that was
> intended, I don't agree.
No. It is just the general principles of computer language design.
The human to human interface means that the humans among themaselves
must be able to interpret the computer language. The human to
computer interface means that computer must be able to translate it.
The computer to computer to computer interface means that computer
programs among themselves must be able to translate it. Different
needs in these areas leads to different computer languages.
Hans Aberg
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