Re: Historians- what is origin of i18n, l10n, etc.?
Having gone through CP/M - DOS - Windows 1.x up to today's versions I can say i18n or internationalization was never a big term at Microsoft. They either talk about globalization for internationalization or localization itself - localizable coming closest to i18n. I doubt you will find any i18n references, maybe you will find g11n or l10n somewhere. Dave - Original Message - From: "Barry Caplan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Rick McGowan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 3:43 PM Subject: Re: Historians- what is origin of i18n, l10n, etc.? > At 08:35 AM 10/10/2002 -0700, Rick wrote: > >The earliest reference I can find to "i18n" in my old e-mail trail is the > >following e-mail to the "sun!unicode" mail list by Glenn Wright. This was > >Oct 5, 1989. By that time, the term was definitely current, as Mr. Hiura > >suggests. > > I registered i18n.com around 94 or so, and the fellow, whose name I am trying hard to recall (first name JR, Australian or British IIRC, red hair), seemed to indicate the coinage was quite some time before that and he was very surprised when I told him how extensive the usage was by then. > > I'm a jonny-come-lately when it comes to unix and other standards history... is there an searchable archive of windows standards anywhere? How about a cvs server of code? It seems to me that i18n or variants could have made it into code as a function name almost immediately, or possibly even before being put into a standards doc > > It seems to me that l10n was extant by the time I came to CA ~ 1992. > > Perhaps Ken Lunde can shed some light - he surely came across a lot of early docs while writing his first book, which was a republication of an online archive he maintained I think. > > Barry >
Re: Origin of the term i18n
I c u rn't up 2 date - we R there - check chat & messenger - urgh D2e - Original Message - From: "Kenneth Whistler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 4:23 PM Subject: Re: Origin of the term i18n > Mark, > > > > Mark, I am curious why you find this term so distasteful? Is it the > > > algorithm itself or just a general objection to acronyms and the like? Or > > > something else entirely? > > > > I find this particular way of forming abbreviations particularly ugly and > > obscure. It is also usually unnecessary; looking at any of the messages > > brought up by Google, the percentage of 'saved' keystrokes is a very small > > proportion of the total count. And when it leaks out into the general > > programmer community, it just looks odd. > > > > For me, it is on the same order as using "nite" for "night", or "cpy" for > > "copy". > > u shuld just be glad u wont live to see the day when netspeak roolz > and ur goofy language is rOxXoRed! > > --K1n >
Re: Origin of the term i18n
I am thankful that these short forms exist, as I must use them a lot in my work where space is priceless: charts, tables, project plans, etc. Not only does it save a lot of time (especially now where I can type only with 1.5 hands - broken thumb) but it looks more neat in overall documentation. I agree, in a text or book I would not necessarily use them if I wasn't sure who the readers are and what their level of knowledge in our area is. Definitely better than InTeRn@i*nAlIʒ@i*n which OE automatically identifies as an email address ... Dave - Original Message - From: "Barry Caplan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Mark Davis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Tex Texin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Unicoders" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "NE Localization SIG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 4:08 PM Subject: Re: Origin of the term i18n > At 12:20 PM 10/11/2002 -0700, Mark Davis wrote: > >> Mark, I am curious why you find this term so distasteful? Is it the > >algorithm itself or just a general objection to acronyms and the like? Or > >something else entirely? > > > >I find this particular way of forming abbreviations particularly ugly and > >obscure. > > I think it is a meme that is catching on and it serves various purposes more important than "saving keystrokes": > > - these are important words that describe entire fields of study in many specialties > - many of them (internationalization, globalization, e.g) are in the common vernacular, with vague denotations and possibly negative connotations in the general public > - As such the words are seriously overloaded and confusing > - Not only that, but they are spelled differently in various parts of the English speaking world, which affects indexing. > - They are long and hard to spell for non-native speakers (and probably most US native speakers too) > - They are toungue twisters for all, especially for some non-native English speakers > - The overloading of definitions, even within scholarly fields, is calling out for a separation and branding (do a search on localization and see how many branches of science you get) > - Long words really suck for design purposes. You would be limited to about 9 point type on your business card if anything other than your title included "Internationalization" > --snip--
Re: again cjk character look-up
You can go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unicode/ to search the archives. Dave - Original Message - From: "Zhang Weiwu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2002 8:34 PM Subject: again cjk character look-up > This mail message is in UTF-8, as the mail header indicated. > > I'm sorry to post a similar question again. Last time when I questioned about ideograph look-up someone gave me a link to something like "CJK indexer". Would this kind man give me the link again? I forgot it. Is there any website keeps old unicode mailing-list archives so that I can search? > > This time I'm looking for a ideograph with 角 on the left and 羊 on the right. It is read 'xiè' in Pinyin. This character doesn't seem exist in CJK and CJK Ext A. >
Re: New version of TR29:
How does the "y" in the English word "rhythm" fit in here? I am not sure if it is called a vowel in English. Dave - Original Message - From: "Philipp Reichmuth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Marco Cimarosti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 1:16 PM Subject: Re: New version of TR29: > Hello Marco, > > Your definition of "LatinVowel" is problematic. Is "Y" only a vowel in > French? In a word such as "yeux", it certainly is a consonant. Could > this lead to problems? > > Defining such classes has the problem that they easily appear too > general. The mere name "LatinVowel" looks too much like this class was > supposed to contain all vowels of the Latin script regardless of > language, but these wouldn't obviously be limited to your selection. > You have to make this really clear. It is *so* tempting to assume that > these are all the possible vowels that somebody is probably going to > do it and base some completely non-apostrophe-related algorithm on it, > just because he can easily extract this information from some Unicode > data. > > Better name them something less potentially misleading like > ItalianFrenchVowel, if you need this character class - it also better > reflects the purpose of the thing. > > Philipp >
Re: Tildes on vowels (Erkenwald)
I am wondering if the statement on that web page "gh=German ich-laut" is applicable. Wouldn't Dutch "gh"-laut make more sense, like in "van Gogh"? That sound is a bit softer than the German one, as far as I remember, maybe matching the Russian sound better. Dave --- Tom Gewecke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >As a visual aid in this discussion, I put the St. Erkenwald > manuscript > >passage online here: > > > > http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/st-erkenwald.html > > On Mac OS X, this displays correctly with OmniWeb 4.1, but other > browsers I > have (IE, Mozilla, Chimera Navigator) all mess it up one way or > another. > > > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
Re: [unicode] Re[2]: Pronunciation of U+0429
I asked the Russian consultants from Moscow to speak very slowly so I
would get any nuances. It was a very clear 's' to 'sh' sound. They said
that they knew of no [StS] version. It all sounds like a dialect issue
to me.
Dave
--- Radovan Garabik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 09, 2002 at 03:47:40PM +0200, Anatoly Vorobey wrote:
> > Hello Radovan,
> >
> > RG> that is indeed the "official" pronunciation,
> >
> > No, it really isn't!
> >
>
> not even if you ask your fellow innocent russian speakers
> "please read for me this word v e r y s l o w l y"
> and listen carefully?
>
> > RG> and if you ask an (educated) Russian
> > RG> speaker to slowly pronounce a word with [U+0429] he will
> pronounce it as
> > RG> [StS]
> >
> > No, he really won't!
>
> it is some time since I had an access to Russian speakers :-)
> so unfortunately I cannot try it
>
> We were certainly taught to pronounce щ as шч (soft ч before soft
> vowels, of course), but all my russian teachers were Slovaks...
>
> >
> > RG> but I guess it is influenced by orthography.
> >
> > What's the orthography got to do with it??
>
> if the children in schools are taught that "щ" is pronounced
> as "шч", they (those who are paying atention) will remember it
> and then use this pronunciation when asked to pronounce each phoneme
> of a given word.
>
> An interesting example:
> In an older Slovak orthography, certain voiced consonants at the
> beginning of words were written as unvoiced ("sber" vs. current
> "zber").
> You can still hear this (over-correct) pronunciation (/sber/) when
> listening to older educated people (i.e. those who did a lot of
> reading in
> the old orthography). In the old times, you could use this as an
> indication
> of a speaker's degree of education.
>
>
> --
> ---
> | Radovan Garabik http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ |
> | __..--^^^--..__garabik @ melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk |
> ---
> Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
> Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help
> me spread!
>
=
Dave Possin
Globalization Consultant
www.Welocalize.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/
__
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RE: German 'ich' (was: Pronunciation of U+0429)
I guess everybody know that "the" has genders in Germany: der, die, das Now imagine the poor American arriving in Munich and stepping on a Bavarian's toe: "Das die der Dei-bel hol" (I messed with the Bavarian spelling a bit to get my point across.) I' bä a Schwob (I learned German the first time in a tiny Swabian village near Tübingen) Dave --- "Vaintroub, Wladislav" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Despite all the similarities in pronounciations of Russian U+0429 and > German > "ich" , > U+0429 seems to be very hard for pronounce Germans, who learn Russian > (the > most complicated for Germans is I think U+042B, which most of them > pronounce > like German "u"). > > Icke, > (a Russian living in Berlin) > > > -Original Message- > From: David Possin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, August 09, 2002 2:17 PM > To: Otto Stolz; Rick Cameron > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: German 'ich' (was: Pronunciation of U+0429) > > > I was thinking about Hessisch too, which is Frankfurt area and the > German Bundesland Hessen. > I think I can distinguish about 6 different dialects, each one has a > different pronunciation of 'ich'. If anybody is interested I can > organize a conference call offlist and we can listen to the various > sounds by phone. Compare it with the Berlin version ;-) > > Dave > --- Otto Stolz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Rick Cameron wrote: > > > > > At http://www.philol.msu.ru/rus/galya-1/kons/n-2.htm you can find > > > audiovisual samples for the consonants of the Russian alphabet. > The > > entry > > > for U+0429 (which they write as D?') sure looks and sounds like > an > > ich-laut > > > to me. > > > > Are you referring to the German standard pronounciation [A?], > > or have you, by any chance, heard this phoneme pronounced by > > a Hessian [Ef]? The latter would resemble the pronounciation of > > "N?" much more than the former (which is normally transliterated > > into Russian as "D3"). > > > > Best wishes, > >Otto Stolz > > > > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
Re: German 'ich' (was: Pronunciation of U+0429)
I was thinking about Hessisch too, which is Frankfurt area and the German Bundesland Hessen. I think I can distinguish about 6 different dialects, each one has a different pronunciation of 'ich'. If anybody is interested I can organize a conference call offlist and we can listen to the various sounds by phone. Compare it with the Berlin version ;-) Dave --- Otto Stolz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Rick Cameron wrote: > > > At http://www.philol.msu.ru/rus/galya-1/kons/n-2.htm you can find > > audiovisual samples for the consonants of the Russian alphabet. The > entry > > for U+0429 (which they write as Ш') sure looks and sounds like an > ich-laut > > to me. > > Are you referring to the German standard pronounciation [ç], > or have you, by any chance, heard this phoneme pronounced by > a Hessian [ʃ]? The latter would resemble the pronounciation of > "щ" much more than the former (which is normally transliterated > into Russian as "г"). > > Best wishes, >Otto Stolz > > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
Re: Pronunciation of U+0429 (was RE: Digraphs as Distinct Logical Uni ts)
Ok, three Russians gave me the pronunciation 's-ch', it sounds almost like English 'sh', and when they transliterate to English they use 'sch'. The 'ch' part did not sound like the German "ich-laut", more like 's' turning into 'sh'. Dave --- Frank da Cruz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I will take a walk to the other side of our building and visit a > > Russian software consulting company (they represent Russian > software > > companies in the US). Let's see how many different opinions I'll > get > > there. ;-) > > > Yes, please! I had four different Russian teachers and one of them > was Russian, and they all used the schoolbook pronunciation > (schtsch), > plus when I went to Moscow, I don't recall hearing the well-known > words that contain that letter being pronounced any differently than > I heard in school. Also I've never heard a recording of Volga > Boatman > where they didn't hit it hard :-) > > - Frank = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
Re: Pronunciation of U+0429 (was RE: Digraphs as Distinct Logical Uni ts)
It is getting quite hard to make the fine differences of sounds visible with a few Latin letters. In a different email Rick points out that my version is too hard, that he has been told the sound is even softer, like 'shdsh' maybe? My feel would be that using 'ch' or even 'tch' would make it harder, harsher. That could also just be my take with German 'ch' in mind. I will take a walk to the other side of our building and visit a Russian software consulting company (they represent Russian software companies in the US). Let's see how many different opinions I'll get there. ;-) Dave --- David Starner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 11:00 AM 8/8/02 -0700, David Possin wrote: > >I have seen the German transliteration being 'schtsch' for it, > English > >would be 'shtsh' with 'sh' spoken like "sharp" in both cases. The > >German 'ch' sound is very different. > > Shouldn't that be 'shch' for English? I've seen that before, and it > makes more sense. > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
Re: ISIRI 2901 to Unicode map
The whole DDK is documented in msdn. Do a search for 'keyboard DDK" there and you will find a lot of information. When I am on my develoer system next week I will look at the DDK itself on our CDs and I will let you know offlist what I found. The sample code isn't online. >From what I can tell it is similar to older systems where I once wrote a keyboard driver that read in mappings to different character sets and macros. Back then I used a flat txt file to store the key mapping, it looked similar to the Unicode character description. I could imagine a XML file with key tags to do the same today, assigning keys to codes with all the shift levels and other key status information. KeyboardClassServiceCallback: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/intinput/hh/intinput/kref_712q.asp Take a look at KbFilter_ServiceCallback then, which allows you to delete, transform, or insert data. I am personally interested in this hook for test automation to simulate keyboard import of Unicode characters. Dave --- "Michael (michka) Kaplan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: "Roozbeh Pournader" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Even a very non-trivial reference to somewhere in MSDN I can > > give to a programmer as a start point? > > Tell them to look at kbd.h in the Windows DDK I believe there are > also > some samples in there. I do not know of anything in MSDN. > > > MichKa > > Michael Kaplan > Trigeminal Software, Inc. -- http://www.trigeminal.com/ > > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com
Re: Unicode certification - was RE: Dublin Conference:
Correct, that is what I was trying to say when I added the goodies. Sorry it didn't come across that way. Let me go a bit deeper in what I mean by compliance levels. 1. Unicode support is implemented and allows for same functionality as with any other legacy encoding system. Detail: up to which Unicode release this support is implemented. 2. Additional Unicode support is implemented and and offers the following list of features beyond legacy encodings: [list of features], for example ICU is fully implemented. 3. Full Unicode support is implemented - all characters can be processed, all glyphs are available, and rendering complies to all rules for each writing system. (I hope I used the correct terms here.) I am most interested in step 1 most of the time, as it is the biggest hurdle when I perform an assessment. When or if steps 2 & 3 are an issue, the compliance testing gets complex on the one side, but on the other side the teams implementing them are much more knowlegable and can offer better compliance details. Tbh, I am not sure where to draw a line between 2 & 3, I think it is a gray zone, rarely found today. Dave --- Barry Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 08:07 AM 7/25/2002 -0700, David Possin wrote: > >After that we can add the chocolate sauce, the cherry, and the > >sprinkles of Unicode. The special Unicode compliance tests are > harder > >to define and to perform, I agree. But in most cases these issues > >haven't even been implemented yet. > > > But isn't the reason someone would want to quantify compliance is > precisely to find out what is implemented and what is not? > > Barry Caplan > www.i18n.com > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com
Re: Unicode certification - was RE: Dublin Conference:
I think there are different levels of Unicode compliance we need to look at. In over 75% of the tests I am satisfied with simple compliance, I don't even expect or assume that more complex issues have been implemented or thoroughly tested. Test 1: A stream of Unicode data gets sent into the system, flows through a sequence of components, gets stored, gets retrieved, and comes back out of the system. Is the data still the same? The following tests are concerned with the different functionality of the components, tested one at a time, then combined till full functionality testing has been achieved, as if non-Unicode data had been used. (This is assuming Unicode-enablement is the objective.) This is the level of compliance I am most interested in. The component can handle Unicode data the same as it can handle legacy encodings. The vanilla test. After that we can add the chocolate sauce, the cherry, and the sprinkles of Unicode. The special Unicode compliance tests are harder to define and to perform, I agree. But in most cases these issues haven't even been implemented yet. Dave --- Tex Texin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > David, > > Why couldn't a checklist be established for each of the > functionalities > that you mention, which a product could score itself against for > conformance, over a state range of supported characters? > > Recently, I did a search for a product, and it was difficult to know > which scripts were supported and whether it had the Unicode > capabilities > I was concerned with. It would have been nice if there was a > statement > of self-compliance that indicated whether or not they supported: > > Character ranges- > broken into reasonable subgroups: > Preservation of unicode characters > Combining characters: > normalization forms: > collations: > etc. > > I think if there were such a checklist with suitable definitions > and/or > conformance requirements, vendors that had done the work to support > Unicode properly would be glad to declare it in their product specs > or > packaging. > > And there are probably many product developers that think they > support > Unicode but in fact don't and such a checklist would help make them > aware of what else they need to do. > > And if they misadvertised or reported incorrectly, I am sure their > customers would be glad to inform them of their oversight thru their > support lines or by announcement to the appropriate user group lists. > > Sure there will be some grey areas based on particular product > functionality, but it would still be a far better situation then we > have > today... > tex > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com
Re: Unicode certification - was RE: Dublin Conference/Standard Disclaimer
Thanks for the Fish, Marion! We could meet at Milliway's and establish the back room setup there. The compliance guidelines could then be called "Unicode's Guide to the Galaxy". A 100% compliant system receives the rating '42'. Non-compliant systems are processed by the Vogons. Yes, right now my check list for Unicode compliance when contacting 3rd parties looks more like this, the higher the number the better: 0. Uni-what? 1. I know somebody who can spell Unicode. 2. I can spell Unicode. 3. Yeah, the specs say it works but we never tested it. 4. We tried it once, seemed to work. 5. We use Java, that's Unicode, right? 6. Yes, but we had to let the developer go who did it when we downsized the last time, so I am not sure about the details. 7. Yes, and it is running with different languages in Europe. 8. Yes, and it is running with different languages in Asia. 9. Yes, it is running with several languages at once. 10. Yes, and we have bidi and complex scripting too. That is about as far as I get, I can only dream of being able to get details like David Starner described for compliance. "`This must be Thursday,' said [Dave] to himself, sinking low over his beer, `I never could get the hang of Thursdays.'" --- Marion Gunn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Arsa James Kass wrote: > > Any series of books which begins with the complete destruction > > of Earth is bound to be amusing, eh? > > > > Best regards, > > > > James Kass. > > Book 4 deals more with the creation of a new/alternative earth, > James! > In any case, as this is way off-topic, might I bring it back, via my > earlier suggestion, as elaborated on by David Possin (below). > > It's perfectly acceptable for Unicode to confine itself to providing > tables as touchpoints for those (its consortium members and others) > actually making builds implementing principles set out in its > publication. > > It would not require the whole consortium to get involved in the > minutiae of what David describes below (a couple of boys in a > backroom > could do it) via a sort of Tucows site set up, giving > Unicode-friendly > ratings, or even broad compliance with MES/BMP/whatever, with no > guarantee of performance, beyond what David has indicated. > > Sounds like a real time-saver, or is that a real-time saver?:-) > > mg > > David Possin wrote: > > > > It would be intereting and helpful to be able to find out if a > product > > is Unicode-compliant before purchasing it. There are various test > > institutions out there that perform that work for other standards. > I > > don't think it would be Unicode.org's responsibility to provide for > the > > certification, to avoid membership issues, maybe it should create > the > > certification requirements, though. > > > > I find myself wasting a lot of time figuring out if a third-party > > product or a certain version can handle Unicode and/or up to which > > version it is compliant to. I would like to be able to see a little > > Unicode logo on a box stamped with a release number, making it the > > manufacturer's responsibility to prove it. It works for operating > > system releases and other stuff, why not here as well? > > > > Dave > > = > > Dave Possin > > Globalization Consultant > > www.Welocalize.com > -- > Marion Gunn * E G T (Estab.1991) vox: +353-1-2839396 * [EMAIL PROTECTED] > 27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn; Baile an Bhóthair; Contae Átha Cliath; Éire > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com
Unicode certification - was RE: Dublin Conference:
It would be intereting and helpful to be able to find out if a product is Unicode-compliant before purchasing it. There are various test institutions out there that perform that work for other standards. I don't think it would be Unicode.org's responsibility to provide for the certification, to avoid membership issues, maybe it should create the certification requirements, though. I find myself wasting a lot of time figuring out if a third-party product or a certain version can handle Unicode and/or up to which version it is compliant to. I would like to be able to see a little Unicode logo on a box stamped with a release number, making it the manufacturer's responsibility to prove it. It works for operating system releases and other stuff, why not here as well? Dave --- "David J. Perry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think that it's very wise of the Unicode Consortium not to certify > or > officially promote any particular implementation. After all, some > programmers are more skilled than others, and some implementations > may > not be of the quality one might wish. Or what if a member company > produced a decent implementation, but the competing product by a > small, > non-member company was better? This could be a real mess. The > Unicode > web site does have a list of Unicode-enabled products (I'm not sure > how > complete it is), which is helpful and appropriate--but I wouldn't > want > to see anything beyond that. > > David > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com
RE: [unicode] Re: FW: Inappropriate Proposals FAQ
Marco, I see your point, you are probably right. Peter, I agree with you that color or other attributes are not Unicode issues when each entity has a different meaning. Each just gets their own codepoint. I was just trying to draw out something useful from a rather useless long thread that wasted a lot of time. What I am trying to understand is where exactly the color (or smell, sound) information gets added to the code. Does the font developer add this information to the glyphs and the rendering engine processes the information correctly? The two glyphs look the same otherwise, so how would the rendering engine know what to do without the attribute info? Does a mechanism for attribute already exist when a glyph gets sent from the font to the rendering engine? I know that this Aztec writing system will probably never be encoded, but I like to think in advance about possible solutions when a related issue might pop up some day, even if I push into the back of my brain then. Looking at the amount of time wasted already, a few thoughts about the only usable issue in the thread shouldn't be a waste of time. So, if it is a font issue, how would these attributes be stored with the font? Or does it look up the descriptive attributes assigned to each Unicode character? Meaning now that the attribute is defined in the Unicode standard as part of the character description, thus a Unicode issue after all? Hmm - full circle - chicken or egg? Dave --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > On 07/05/2002 03:00:35 PM Marco Cimarosti wrote: > > >David Possin wrote: > >> But, if something it silently ignored, then somebody has > discovered > >> something that nobody wants to touch. I have observed this sevaral > >> times now, the latest incident was in the Chromatic Font Research > >> thread, with 2 cases: > >> > >> Aztec glyphs: [...] Silence. > > > >Funny. I interpreted that silence the opposite way: very positively. > I > >didn't expect any immediate action, and the absence of denials made > me > feel > >the information I passed was not totally pointless. > > > >Anyway, even if the silence actually meant "Who cares?", it doesn't > bother > >me, because I think this is NOT an issue for Unicode... > > I think Marco has got this right. Let's suppose Aztec writing gets > deciphered and there are cases of the same shape with different > colouring > to mean different things. Let's further suppose that we determine > that the > difference in semantics isn't akin to the ways in which colouring of > English text might conceivably be used (e.g. for emphasis) but is > really > fundamental. Let's also further suppose that, taking all things into > consideration, we really do consider this text and come to the > conclusion > that the best solution is one that's purely text-based (i.e. no > markup or > other higher-level protocal). We're nowhere near having made all > these > conclusions, but let's just suppose. So, we identify two things that > are > minimally contrastive: a red-and-white-whatsit, and a > blue-green-and-yellow-whatsit. They are two entities and each gets a > codepoint. That's an encoding issue. How they get rendered isn't an > encoding issue. > > Of course, at that point, we'd be wanting to consider how to deal > with > chromatic issues in text rendering where chromaticity is inherent to > the > character and not a matter of user-discretion (for which formatting > is > appropriate). But we are not yet at the point of knowing that is even > necessary. And since it would clearly not be a trivial problem to > solve > (it's not finding a way to do it that's hard -- it's the huge amount > of > secondary implications), I think the silence amounts to a reaction > that we > neither are ready to cross that bridge nor do we need to at this time > -- in > fact, it's not yet certain that we will ever need to -- and that in > the > mean time there are more immediate and real concerns to be dealt > with. > > > > - Peter > > > --- > Peter Constable > > Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International > 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA > Tel: +1 972 708 7485 > E-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
RE: Saying characters out loud (derives from hash, pound,octothor pe?)
OK, while we are at it: smelly fonts, anyone? (actually I can imagine how some fonts smell) Dave --- Barry Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 09:43 AM 7/12/2002 -0400, Suzanne M. Topping wrote: > > >> -Original Message----- > >> From: David Possin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > >> > >> so now we have a chromatic audio attribute for each character? > > > >Don't be ridiculous. Sounds don't have chroma. > > > >There will however be a need for tone and accent variation so that > >proper localization can be executed. > > > >;^P > > I have been dreaming of the idea of synaesthetic applications for > years but haven't come up with a way to do it yet. But sounds > absolutely will need chroma, that much I know. And when you "say it > with feeling", the fonts will literally be perceived as "feeling" > > Such an application better not be written for Windows, because the > "blue screen of death" will be felt rather than seen :) > > Barry Caplan > www.i18n.com > > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: Saying characters out loud (derives from hash, pound,octothor pe?)
so now we have a chromatic audio attribute for each character? a real challenge to font builders and renderers. (sorry, I just had to post it back to you unicode guys) Suzanne, you need to extend the definition of your new group. ROTFL, Dave --- Tex Texin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Yes, Borge! > > So when do we start the informative annex listing all the punctuation > characters and the appropriate noises to make? > ;-) > > "Figge, Donald" wrote: > > > > Suzanne M. Topping wrote: > > > > >There was a comedian in the 1970's (I remember him from the > children's > > >public television show "Electric Company") who pronounced > punctuation > > >"phonetically" while reading various passages. So it wasn't words > for > > >the symbols, it was sounds. > > > > That was probably Victor Borge. > > DonF > > // > > -- > - > Tex Texin cell: +1 781 789 1898 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Xen Master http://www.i18nGuy.com > > XenCraft http://www.XenCraft.com > Making e-Business Work Around the World > - > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: Multiple encodings for 1 character
You will have to normalize the way the strings are processed, and you need to make sure it is done the same way everytime. Checkout ICU for this purpose. http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/ Dave --- "Theodore H. Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What is going to be done about the confusion generated from > having multiple ways to encode the same character? > > For example, for filenames, OSX will encode an accented Roman > letter one way, while for filenames Windows will encode it the > other way. These kind of confusions are totally expected, if > Unicode will allow more than one way to encode the same > character. > > This means that matching algorithm's won't work, because the > characters are different! > > Will there be some kind of recommendation of which to avoid? > Will the Unicode consortium make a standard to say that one of > these encodings is strongly not recommended, and in fact > depreciated? > > And what about the OS that uses this encoding? How will the > Unicode consortium make the newly-offending OS change it's ways? > > And what about the hordes of apps that expect one format but > don't expect the other? And the hoardes of OS independant apps > (Java? Perl?) that might generate conflicting versions? > > = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: [unicode] Re: Chromatic font research
Daniel, Is there a possibility to get an image what a red/black text looks like? Or do you know a website that has an image and more information? I like what you say at the end of your reply: "My thought at the time was that it was just a natural adjustment that one makes when going from ink and paper to computer typography, the goal being that we try to improve upon what the hand can do without losing the essence of it." It makes a lot of sense, especially now that color monitors and color printers are normal in our computer life. Why do we have to stick to monochrome characters and fonts and glyphs? A lot of the existing symbols in Unicode would look better in color, too. But reading your description on how the red markup is performed I could imagine it being done with a markup command changing color and returning to a character and applying the red markup character over it. Or what about a ZWJ with color change command? Dave --- Daniel Yacob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > In the handwritten form, could you please say whether the adding of > the red > > increases the width of the area needed to represent the character? > > yes, absolutely, at least by the width of two dots. > > > > Also, when handwritten, does the scribe have a black pen in one > hand and a > > red pen in the other so that colouring takes place on a character > by > > character basis as writing proceeds, or does the scribe put down > one pen and > > pick up another, and, if so, is that on a character by character > basis or is > > that on the basis of producing a number of characters in black and > then > > adding the red afterwards. This would seem to be possibly > significant due > > to the possible need to allow for the greater width of the area > used for a > > character that is later to receive red flourishes. > > my oh my, these are wonderfully interesting questions :) I would > think the > use of tools would be highly sensitive to the experience, training, > and > learned habits of the writer. I haven't witnessed a great enough > number to > sensibly say what a norm would be. I certainly haven't seen a person > hold > two pens at once though. The scribes I've seen (maybe 4 I watched > closely) > were pragmatic in their writing, when a red word occurred they would > put down > the black brush and pick up the red and write the word. While the > utensil > was still in hand they would go back and add red dots or strokes > where they > thought it was needed. If no red words occurred (usually one every > sentence > or two depending upon the material) they would continue writing in > black > until the end of a sentence or section and stop there to change pens > to go > back and update punctuation or tonal marks. Again, I wouldn't draw > any > significant conclusions from this. > > I don't believe extra space is considered for adding red marks later, > the > red is allowed to bleed over the black. Trying to reproduce the > practice > with fonts though I have used an enlarged version of 1362 because the > result > looked much clearer. The original intention was lost when keeping > the original > proportions. My thought at the time was that it was just a natural > adjustment > that one makes when going from ink and paper to computer typography, > the > goal being that we try to improve upon what the hand can do without > losing > the essence of it. > > /Daniel > > Resending this email because for some reason my membership in the Unicode list got deleted. = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: [unicode] Re: FW: Inappropriate Proposals FAQ
Resending this email because for some reason my membership in the Unicode list got deleted. --- Rick McGowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Suzanne T asked: > > > Can people from the review committee give me some hard and fast > > rules for when something is thrown out? > > --snip-- > One rule of thumb that people can also use: if an off-the-cuff > proposal > for a thing doesn't fly on the Unicode list, it is unlikely to fly in > UTC. > > Rick > I have noticed something else in this aspect. If an idea gets bashed on the Unicode list it won't make it, and almost all the time I agree that it shouldn't make it. But, if something it silently ignored, then somebody has discovered something that nobody wants to touch. I have observed this sevaral times now, the latest incident was in the Chromatic Font Research thread, with 2 cases: Aztec glyphs: Some of the glyphs are identical in shape and form, but a certain colored area changes the meaning if a different color is applied. When Michael Everson asked for proof, both Marco Cimarosti and I sent him links to websites that state this color issue. Silence. Ethiopian writing: Daniel Yacob described the usage of red dots, accents, and words in that writing system, nobody except WO followed up with the significance of Daniel's statements. Silence, even though he wrote "The capability to the same electronically would be well received. /Daniel." I see two valid possible proposals here to add a color attribute to a character. What will happen if a need for these characters is discovered, a consortium with the necessary background is formed, and the UTC receives an orderly proposal? Between all the arguing and mile long emails nobody actually saw this possibility, or wanted to see the valid issues for a proposal. I believe it is necessary to invest some thought into what a color implementation would mean for Unicode, not for a holly with red berries, but for a real writing system. The silence after these valid statements were made disturbs me. Dave = Dave Possin Globalization Consultant www.Welocalize.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales/ __ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
