On Sun, 2002-05-19 at 22:18, Moshe Zadka wrote: > On Sun, 19 May 2002, Uri Bruck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > The Hebrew alphabet also remained pretty much constant for the last 2K > > years, and is flexible enough to serve well three languages > > No, it remained dead and nobody used it in day to day. Because it > is a stupid alphabet, optimized for carving on stone. > There are many more problems with Hebrew's native alphabet than > just RTL (which is itself a problem with smearing ink on non-electronic > media, so it's not a new problem): it OCRs very poorly (there are only > so many ways you can chisel), it sucks for cursory reading (ditto), > it loses gobs of information (vowels). The alphabet is silly. Unless > you believe there is something holy about it, I don't see the point > with sticking with a design decision made 5k years ago and which > only made sense with the technology at that time.
Alphabets aren't "designed" to be easily OCRable or to have a high entropy; in fact, alphabets aren't designed at all. This is not an assembly language. Humans don't work like computers, and they aren't supposed to. Humans like variety, humans have the notion of "art", humans make mistakes and forget things, and these are not deficiencies that humans have -- in fact, I think it's the computers who are screwed up for not being able to make mistakes and forget things, because it makes them so much predictable and boring. You analyze the alphabet from a very practical point of view, but the world just doesn't work that way. If the world was "designed" optimally, we would all be speaking one language, and we would be flying instead of walking. This delicate balance of "good" and "bad", the imperfection that exists in every entity in the universe is what makes the world go on. How would you like to live in a world where every problem, need and desire is solvable and fulfillable instantly without any effort? Think about it. But boy, do I digress. I'd like to drive Uri Bruck's point home: "Computers are supposed to serve us, not the other way around." You see, our alphabet and language looks the way it does for many more reasons than one can possibly contain in his brain at once: it has evolved for thousands of years and has been influenced by millions of people and events. Computers are nowhere in the equasion. They are our tool, and therefore we dictate their workings, and not the other way around. It is quite possible, and even likely, that computers will affect our language, since they already affect just about everything else in our lives. But they are not here to fold the human brain into a mathematical formula and alleviate our "human lackings": we are a lot smarter than that. ObTopic: Don't worry, smart computer geeks will find ways to make the computer speak our language -- we're actually a long way there already. If you're intimidated by this problem, then work on other things for the time being, come back in a couple of years and you'll see how things are *much* better. If the Japanese managed to get *their* language onto the computer, we certainly can get ours. Lets not give up. The world is such a more interesting place for all the different languages and alphabets that we have. -- Alex Shnitman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://alexsh.hectic.net/ UIN 188956 PGP 0xEC5D619D / E1 F2 7B 6C A0 31 80 28 63 B8 02 BA 65 C7 8B BA ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
