Markus,
I think the Unicode list is not the appropriate forum to blast US cultural
norms.
For the record, were Germany or France or any other "enlightened" culture
isolated geographically (and economically) from other parts of the world, they
would no doubt have incompatible cultural norms.
Witness how long it has taken England to adopt metric standards, for example.
Look how close they are. Consider their trading partners. But note also that
they are on an island.
I think US bashing is getting a bit tiresome. Let's just move on to the
widespread implementation of Unicode and deal with functional requirements of
all kinds from all places as we get them.
Andrea
-- Andrea Vine Sun Internet Mail Server i18n architect avine@eng.sun.com Romanes eunt domus.Markus Kuhn wrote: > > "Alain" wrote on 1999-06-25 15:22 UTC: > > I'm puzzled... Who dumped Roman numerals even in Europe? > > The primary culprit was an Italian of the name Leonardo Pisano, who > called himself Filius Bonaccii, today probably more well known as > Leonardo Fibonacci. He summarized in 1202 A.D. the complete knowledge on > algebra and arithmetic in his book "Liber abaci". This book then caused > the decimal system and the many simplifications that it brought to > become widely used in Western Europe. With the decimal system came also > the concept of the number zero, for which there exists no equivalent in > the Roman notation of numbers. > > The European/ISO time notation (midnight at the start of the day = 00:00) > made elegant use of this invention of the digit zero, while people in > the US still follow the Roman number tradition and have to start the day > with "hour number XII ante meridian". The problems of the US time notation > are obvious and numerous: > > - It is longer than the normal 24h notation ("12:00 A.M." versus "00:00"). > > - It takes somewhat more time/effort for humans to compare two times > in 12h notation. > > - It is not clear, how 00:00, 12:00 and 24:00 are represented. > Even encyclopedias and style manuals contain contradicting > descriptions and a common quick fix seems to be to avoid > "12:00 a.m./p.m." altogether and write "noon", "midnight", or > "12:01 a.m./p.m." instead, although the word "midnight" still > does not distinguish between 00:00 and 24:00 (midnight at the > start or end of a given date). > > - It makes people occasionally believe that the next day starts at the > overflow from "12:59 a.m." to "1:00 a.m.", which is sometimes a > problem not only when people try to program the timer of VCRs > shortly after midnight. > > - It is not easily comparable with a string compare operation. > > - It is not immediately clear for the unaware, whether the time > between "12:00 a.m./p.m." and "1:00 a.m./p.m." starts at 00:00 > or at 12:00, i.e. the English 12h notation is more difficult to > understand. > > It is a shame that people actually invest effort to represent the time > of the day in such a baroque way even in the computer age in the US. If > you read the data sheet for the battery-backed clock chip on your PC > mother board, you will notice that is contains even special hardware > support for presenting the time in am/pm format to the CPU, which then > has to use additional code to convert it back into a more straight > forward notation. It is mind boggling, to what trouble US engineers go > to preserve these bizarre habits appentently without ever thinking were > they came from or whether they are practical. Exactly the same happens > with the metric system, A4 paper, and all the other improvements and > modernized conventions that the rest of the world has in the mean time > happily adopted. Welcome in the 21st century. > > Some aspects of i18n have nothing to do with culture. They are just sad. > > Markus > > P.S.: If you want to learn more about a neat idea burried in an exercise > found on pages 123-124 of Fibonacci's Liber abaci, and if you don't mind > reading my German high-school thesis, then please be invited to have a > look at > > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/kuhn-fa.pdf > > -- > Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK > Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:47 EDT