RE: ASCII adequacy (was: RE: benefits of unicode)
At 3:19 PM -0700 4/20/01, Asmus Freytag wrote: At 03:50 PM 4/20/01 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I say 0 and 1 are adequate. I find this discussion rather pointless since we all already know that ASCII is adequate if the given premise is that ASCII is adequate. I don't see what's there to discuss. The actual question before the House is whether it is proper to claim, as I do, that it is a benefit of Unicode that it is the only character encoding that provides adequate support for monolingual English computing, where it is to be understood that o Computer programming and e-mail do not span the full range of English-language computing. o Neither do Microsoft Office and Adobe FrameMaker. o TeX with Computer Modern fonts is the ultimate ASCII hack, but not the solution. o The complete Adobe character set would have worked for English, if we had had a usable encoding of it all. To put it another way, Unicode will support vastly improved handling of English on computers, and enable a wide range of new and improved applications. Programming languages accepting Unicode source, Unicode e-mail, Unicode URLs, Unicode publishing software, and Unicode TeX all exist in primitive forms today. The full flowering is still at least ten years away, but without Unicode hardly any globally multilingual software would exist at all, and none of it would be suitable for quality publishing. We are just trying to see if tautologies still work as advertised or if the need to be updated. A./ They seem to work as well as ever. :-) I reject the circular argument that ASCII (or any other existing character encoding) is adequate for the applications it is presently used for. For my purposes, adequate includes not requiring overloading of character codes, as we had to do when combining Windows pseudo-ANSI, Symbol, and Zapf Dingbat character-equals-glyph fonts encoded with the same set of octets. Also, BTW, what combination of fonts or encodings is required when beginning with ISO 8859-1, if we want to add at least the basic punctuation and math symbols for everyday English? -- Edward Cherlin Generalist A knot! exclaimed Alice. Oh, do let me help to undo it. Alice in Wonderland
Re: ASCII adequacy (was: RE: benefits of unicode)
On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 11:31:10AM -0500, Ayers, Mike wrote: Errr - my point is: "If you attempt to promote Unicode by saying that it now enables adequate computing in English, you will not be well received." What's yours? Depends on who you're talking to and what you mean by adequate computing. If you're talking to some Unix grognard about Perl hacking, then yes, you will not be well recieved. But for large groups of people - publishers, authors, mathematians, scientists, programs limited to the ASCII character set just don't cut it. (Of course, Unicode isn't neccessary for those people; many got by just fine with TeX and WordPerfect and other programs that have larger than an 8-bit character set via kludges.) -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org "I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored." - Joseph_Greg
RE: ASCII adequacy (was: RE: benefits of unicode)
On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 11:31:10AM -0500, Ayers, Mike wrote: Errr - my point is: "If you attempt to promote Unicode by saying that it now enables adequate computing in English, you will not be well received." What's yours? Depends on who you're talking to and what you mean by adequate computing. If you're talking to some Unix grognard about Perl hacking, Oy! I resemble that remark. Of course I am rather biased but I still think your comment is somewhat off the mark and unfair. Perl is and now been for years rather committed to providing a good Unicode support. We are far from perfect but definitely getting there. After all, it's just text -- and Perl rather fancies itself to be rather good at that. then yes, you will not be well recieved. But for large groups of people - publishers, authors, mathematians, scientists, programs limited to the ASCII character set just don't cut it. (Of course, Unicode isn't neccessary for those people; many got by just fine with TeX and WordPerfect and other programs that have larger I understand that Omega, a (La)TeX variant does Unicode. than an 8-bit character set via kludges.)
RE: ASCII adequacy (was: RE: benefits of unicode)
Perhaps I should have gone with C, but the point was your English-processing English-commented Perl programs are in ASCII. You sent out an ASCII email. If you were (?) English Heavens, no :-) Strictly speaking not even ISO 8859-1 would be enough for Finnish, I think 8859-15 is the first set that covers all the required characters. (But 8859-1 is enough for everyday use.) all your files would probably be named in ASCII and all your daily work in handling those files would be in ASCII. I find that rather mindnumbingly self-fulfilling prophecy. Computing people have fit themselves to the ASCII space - in Unix/ksh/Bash/C/Perl(?) the special symbols pretty much fill the non-alphanumeric space of ASCII. It's adequate for what I do as a programmer and hacker. Adequate, yes, but so was clay and reeds for thousands of years and for kings greater than any of us. It's not adequate for what I do as transcriber of books and a mathematics major. In truly demanding typesetting, like mathematics, we get into areas not covered by Unicode, like fonts, kerning, the whole two-dimensional (as opposed to one-dimensional) layout business.
Re: ASCII adequacy (was: RE: benefits of unicode)
On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 02:43:02PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Heavens, no :-) Strictly speaking not even ISO 8859-1 would be enough for Finnish, I think 8859-15 is the first set that covers all the required characters. (But 8859-1 is enough for everyday use.) all your files would probably be named in ASCII and all your daily work in handling those files would be in ASCII. I find that rather mindnumbingly self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, that doesn't negate it's truth. Also, you're part of the problem. "8859-1 is enough for everyday use." So long as the Finnish use 8859-1/-15, the Russians use KOI8-R, and the Japenese use EUC-JP, the only common subset acceptable for use under Unix will be ASCII. You can't introduce a new regex syntax that requires U+2045 and U+2046 unless almost everyone uses Unicode. Computing people have fit themselves to the ASCII space - in Unix/ksh/Bash/C/Perl(?) the special symbols pretty much fill the non-alphanumeric space of ASCII. It's adequate for what I do as a programmer and hacker. Adequate, yes, but so was clay and reeds for thousands of years and for kings greater than any of us. No one's arguing over if Unicode should be used. This discussion is about what's adequate. It's not adequate for what I do as transcriber of books and a mathematics major. In truly demanding typesetting, like mathematics, we get into areas not covered by Unicode, like fonts, kerning, the whole two-dimensional (as opposed to one-dimensional) layout business. I'm currently in a class where the teacher heavily uses Maple. It would be an amazing boon to me if the Maple programs used combining vectors above and real Greek letters, so that they corresponded to what's going on the board. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org "I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored." - Joseph_Greg
RE: ASCII adequacy (was: RE: benefits of unicode)
At 03:50 PM 4/20/01 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I say 0 and 1 are adequate. I find this discussion rather pointless since we all already know that ASCII is adequate if the given premise is that ASCII is adequate. I don't see what's there to discuss. We are just trying to see if tautologies still work as advertised or if the need to be updated. A./
RE: ASCII adequacy (was: RE: benefits of unicode)
Also, you're part of the problem. "8859-1 is enough for everyday use." Yes, and rather proud of it, in the same way as opposition is the way to healthy democracy. Also, we are not the guilty ones, we use what's given to us, I would say the guilty ones are the "adequate" designers of the computer systems of yore. No one's arguing over if Unicode should be used. This discussion is about what's adequate. I say 0 and 1 are adequate. I find this discussion rather pointless since we all already know that ASCII is adequate if the given premise is that ASCII is adequate. I don't see what's there to discuss.
