Re: Unicode end-users

From: John Wilcock (john@tradoc.fr)
Date: Fri Aug 01 1997 - 04:15:50 EDT


On Fri, 1 Aug 1997 00:39:08 -0700 (PDT), Graham Rhind wrote:
>"Software is still limited by underlying ASCII code pages. Unicode can be
>used internally by any software which supports it, but there is no way for
>a user to type in a "code" standard for any program to specify a Unicode
>which can then be recognized by other programs across hardware and software
>platforms."
>
>Is this really the case? Are there plans to enable Unicode to function as
>ASCII does, for example, so that it is application independent and is of
>direct use to the user rather than just to software developers? It is very
>depressing for users such as myself in Europe that even after all these
>years it is still impossible for us to take a database of names from two
>neighbouring countries and merge them because database software assigns a
>single code page to the tables and this cannot represent all the characters
>needed.
>
>Please tell me I'm wrong ......

Speaking as an end user (who used to be a programmer, but who has
never written programs which take account of unicode)...

What you want (as I understand it) is a standard way of using Unicode
characters in programs which don't support them directly.

I don't expect this will ever happen, because in the end it would just
be a temporary workaround until Unicode-capable programs become more
widespread. Those who have an interest in this no doubt prefer to work
on full Unicode support than on support for a temporary workaround.

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