Re: Purpose of plain text (WAS: Re: combining: half, double, triple et cetera ad infinitum)

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz_at_gnu.org>
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:34:12 -0500

> From: "Doug Ewell" <doug_at_ewellic.org>
> Cc: unicode_at_unicode.org, "Dr. Kusum Perera" <kusum510_at_gmail.com>,
> "CE Whitehead" <cewcathar_at_hotmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:30:00 -0700

I'm sorry, but I don't understand why this argument tends to
concentrate on claims that were never made in the first place. The
OP's intent was very clear even to a non-native English speaker such
as myself. We should be talking about the important issues instead.
A few examples:

> Naena Guru <naenaguru at gmail dot com> wrote:
>
> > If it came out as Unicode has its only goal as money making, that is not what I meant to say. Nothing can be such. You sell something for the buyer's benefit, right?
>
> Unicode doesn't sell anything, except (I suppose) printed copies of the
> standard and admission to conferences.

Naena Guru didn't say Unicode was selling something. The intended
meaning of "You sell something" in the context of the OP is quite
clear, even though English is not my first language.

> > However, it is probably the main objective. Who works for nothing except odd crazies like me?
>
> You'd be surprised how many people have volunteered their time and
> expertise to help improve Unicode.

Naena Guru didn't say anything to the contrary. "Crazies" can be
counted in thousands. Again, the intent is quite clear and does not
warrant such nitpicking.

> > When years back I asked why ligatures formed inside Notepad and not inside Word, I had the clear reply that it is owing to a business decision.
>
> That doesn't mean Unicode is broken.

Naena Guru didn't say it was. The intent is quite clear: proprietary
applications do or don't do something due to "business decisions" that
don't necessarily have anything to do with the needs of the audience.
Sometimes these decisions are arbitrary. I don't see how this can be
argued against.

Now to the important issues:

> How can I search a group of documents, one written in Devanagari and
> another in Sinhala and another in Tamil and another in Oriya, for a
> given string if they all use the same encoding, and the only way to tell
> which is which is to see them rendered in a particular font?

I don't get it: how can you do that in English or French or German?
Not even different fonts will tell you which is which. You simply
need to know the language, period.
Received on Tue Nov 15 2011 - 00:36:29 CST

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