From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Thu Aug 17 2006 - 23:06:57 CDT
Kent Spielmann <Kent underscore Spielmann at sil dot org> wrote:
> Does any one have any favorite web resources or teaching materials for
> introducing Unicode to the uninitiated? Things that are fairly free
> from technical jargon. How about a curriculum, teaching assignments or
> tests?
Two that come to mind are the "What is Unicode?" page:
http://www.unicode.org/standard/WhatIsUnicode.html
and the QuickStudy "Unicode Guide":
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/guideform.html
It's not as easy as it might seem to describe coded character sets,
especially one as complex as Unicode, in terms that a non-technical
person would understand. The "What is Unicode?" page tries with its
opening sentence, "Fundamentally, computers just deal with numbers."
Personally I dislike that sentence -- it is not really accurate
(fundamentally, computers just deal with "on" and "off") and
misrepresents the nature of computerized text processing -- but it does
seem to strike a note with non-technical people.
What is really needed, of course, is a "Unicode for Dummies" book.
Seriously. Anyone who has read books in the "Dummies" or "Complete
Idiot" series knows that some of them are quite well-written, and
excellent at teaching new material to educable beginners.
-- Doug Ewell Fullerton, California, USA http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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