From: Don Osborn (dzo@bisharat.net)
Date: Sun Sep 17 2006 - 22:30:10 CDT
Mark, Doug, Steve, Thanks for your replies which are most interesting and
helpful. I should clarify, having quoted from the article in a way that
might give a misimpression about the author's intent, that I think he was
not arguing against Unicode but rather attempting to give an appraisal of
how well the current state of the technology is facilitating multilingual
ICT, problems encountered, etc., within a broader discussion of factors
affecting the potential for linguistic diversity on the net.
My interest in getting some reaction from experts like you on this list was
to better understand his appraisal of Unicode in this particular aspect, and
how much credence to give to the issue of the space requirements of Unicode
in something I'm writing. The context of my work is Africa, where a lot of
computer systems are older and bandwidth is often very narrow, and any
discussion of file sizes etc. merits looking at (though the main issues for
Unicode in Africa still probably are (1) systems too old for it and (2)
computer and software people there not knowing much about it).
But Paolillo's remarks about programmers and Unicode seemed to go well
beyond the typical discussion of such limitations, which made the issue all
the more interesting to bring up here. Especially since the document it
appeared in is intended to inform discussions about the multilingual
internet.
Thanks again, and I look forward to learning more as the discussion evolves.
Don
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