What do people think about making a statement or two indicating what Unicode
does NOT do?
I recently had an extended "discussion" with a software development manager
about his use of the phrase "Unicode version" when talking about a new
product. It turned out he meant that the software was fully
internationalized and had features tweaked to be able to deal with
internationalization issues. I pointed out that Unicode had nothing to do
with features, and that an application could be Unicode-based and still be
completely unlocalizable, depending on how it was developed.
At any rate, it took a long time for me to understand what he meant by "the
Unicode version" and an even longer time for me to convince him that it was
an inaccurate use of the word. Unfortunately, in his IM organization, this
usage is apparently widespread.
This leads me to think that perhaps a press release might benefit from a
quick statement on what Unicode does not do.
Just my two cents.
Suzanne Topping
Localization Unlimited
Globalization process improvement consulting and training
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark E. Davis <markdavis@ispchannel.com>
To: Unicode List <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2000 9:49 AM
Subject: Re: Unicode 3.0 press statements
> Those are good discussions. Let me throw out a few possibilities based on
what I
> have heard:
>
> - "can represent all of the computerized text in the world"
>
> ("all" being slightly broad; there will always be some exceptions, if
someone is
> using a specialized font to represent characters not in Unicode. Maybe
> "essentially all"? Could be "all" if the private use zones are counted.)
>
> - "can represent all of the text for the written languages of the world
used in
> commerce and publishing"
>
> (Not very snappy. Same caveat for "all" applies)
>
> - "can represent all of the text for commerce and publishing used around
the
> world"
>
> (Hmmm)
>
> Add in the sentence somewhere:
>
> "More than half of the world's population uses writing systems other than
Latin
> alphabet."
>
> Mark
>
> P.S., on this thread, I'd appreciate it if people CC'd my work address:
> mark.davis@us.ibm.com
>
>
>
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