Re: Persian decimal separator
The only question I have here is that no one was *ever* suggesting a slash be used for the decimal separator. The suggestion was made for the CURRENCY separator. Since the question was asked (and all of the answers were made) mentioning the decimal separator only, I would have to wonder whether they were answering the actual issue that was under consideration here? I have two acquaintances (not connected to MS) who speak Farsi, neither is a linguistic authority or pretends to be. Both recognize the slash as a currency separator, but one of them believes it to be inappropriate to use on non-Farsi currency amounts and both of them admit the matter is mostly theoretical since the Farsi currency does not currently see a need for a currency separator (something we discussed last time, I believed). This is hardly conclusive proof, but if non-technical native speakers can cast doubt on an issue, then obviously there is reason to believe there may be an issue worth investigating? I am not saying that you or they are wrong and would never pretend to have a true opinion here other than to say I DON'T KNOW (until and unless I live in Iran and learn Farsi to the point where I can respond to the question!). But I am unsure how a company (such as Microsoft, which currently lists the slash as the currency separator for Farsi) can proceed to consider evidence that may well be tainted by having the wrong question asked? Clearly there was some basis for believing that the currency separator was a slash, and there should be a compelling basis for believing that this was a mistake? MichKa Michael Kaplan Trigeminal Software, Inc. http://www.trigeminal.com/ - Original Message - From: "Roozbeh Pournader" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Unicode List" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 3:22 PM Subject: Persian decimal separator Dear All, Some time ago, there was a discussion here about the Persian decimal separator. I am posting a short report about our queries into different Iranian bodies. Sorry for the long and somehow formal thing, but it seems important to us. I'm still waiting for responses from Iranian Academy for Sciences (IAS), and Iranian Mathematical Society (IMS). I have answers from these sources: * Iranian Academy for Persian Language and Literature (IAPLL); * Iranian Standards and Industrial Research Institute (ISIRI) which is the national standard body; * Iran University Press (IUP), and Fatemi Publishing Institute (FPI), which are the largest and highest quality academic publishing houses in Iran. I think that IMS will answer the same as FPI, since they seem to use the same conventions in their books that is not published by any of these two houses. They certainly use the house rules when they publish with one of these two, but not with other houses. I also add our conclusions, as current representatives of HCI (Iranian High Council of Informatics) in text encoding issues which is the responsible body for national computing related standards, which is transfered to it from ISIRI. 1. All sources agree that slash and decimal separator should be considered different. 2. ISIRI has a character set in their standards (ISIRI 3342, the rarely-used national standard) which distinguishes the two characters, while not distinguishing hyphen from minus or colon from division sign (of which the latter case is really weird). They did not give any special comments regarding the standard, since the standards commitee for the character set issues is dissolved for a long time, and the responsiblity was handed to the HCI. The standard shows the glyph for the decimal separator as described in 4. They have also another standard (ISIRI 2901-revised:1994) for keyboards, that distinguishes the two characters. 3. IUP and FPI already use the same publishing software that distinguishes these, for more than five years, and IUP has distinguished them even before that time. They both agree that the the sequence ONE SLASH TWO means 0.5 and not 1.2. They specially say this because of the need for clear interpretation of in-text formulas. (IAPLL sees this interpretion lying beyond its competence, and refered us to the IAS.) IUP has also published a scientific style guide which explicitly mentions the difference, and asks for a glyph shape described in the last part of the next item (I can provide you with copies of the page mentioning this. We also use software that distinguishes these. 4. All except IUP agree that the glyph shape for the decimal separator should be a shortened, lowered and possibly more slanted slash. But IUP has changed the default behaviour of the mentioned software to use a glyph exactly similiar to the isolated form of REH (U+0631) for the decimal separator. This has been the case even in their old books, before their adoption of computer software for publishing.
Re: Persian decimal separator
On Thu, 16 Nov 2000, Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote: The only question I have here is that no one was *ever* suggesting a slash be used for the decimal separator. The suggestion was made for the CURRENCY separator. Since the question was asked (and all of the answers were made) mentioning the decimal separator only, I would have to wonder whether they were answering the actual issue that was under consideration here? They were answering the same issue. No one considers the decimal and currency separator different here, and that has been the reason behind querying about the decimal separator only. They are named the same in Persian, "Momayyez". I have two acquaintances (not connected to MS) who speak Farsi, neither is a linguistic authority or pretends to be. Both recognize the slash as a currency separator, but one of them believes it to be inappropriate to use on non-Farsi currency amounts and both of them admit the matter is mostly theoretical since the Farsi currency does not currently see a need for a currency separator (something we discussed last time, I believed). This is hardly conclusive proof, but if non-technical native speakers can cast doubt on an issue, then obviously there is reason to believe there may be an issue worth investigating? Yes, and that has been the reason behind my investigation. As I told, slash is acceptable as a decimal separator, when an appropriate glyph is not available. I also agree with your sources that first, Iranian Rials won't need any currency separator, since we don't use fractions of Rial anymore. Bank accounts and all other systems truncate the amount to whole Rials (you may know, 1 US Dollar is equal to about 8500 Rials). I can also investigate the problem of using the Persian decimal separator for foreign currencies, but if you want to know about my opponion, you should use the Persian decimal separator if you are using Arabic-Indic digits, and you should use the period if you're using the European digits. Neither slash nor the Persian decimal separator is acceptable between European digit shapes. I am not saying that you or they are wrong and would never pretend to have a true opinion here other than to say I DON'T KNOW (until and unless I live in Iran and learn Farsi to the point where I can respond to the question!). But I am unsure how a company (such as Microsoft, which currently lists the slash as the currency separator for Farsi) can proceed to consider evidence that may well be tainted by having the wrong question asked? Clearly there was some basis for believing that the currency separator was a slash, and there should be a compelling basis for believing that this was a mistake? The basis exists. There are many kinds of these common typographical mistakes in Iran, because of the education system. The professors do not bring the attention of students to these issues, believing these to be unimportant issues. Only curious people will notice these. We are only a developing country, you know. As examples of this, I can tell you about the common mistake of ommitting spaces in the texts written using traditional typewriters. Some people could not understand why a space is needed to separate words when they do not join the consecutive words. And I'm talking about only 10 years ago. The situation is reversed now in case of many computer programs that do not respect ZWNJ, and many computer users now use spaces instead of non-joiners. The simply do not know the difference. Thank you for your attention, Roozbeh.
Re: Persian decimal separator
I would openly encourage you to help "perpetuate the evidence" so that this change can be evaluated and the right thing can be done in MS products (which as I said currently have the slash as a currency sign). Cites and sources for the investigation, etc. would be very important here. I do not think there is a localized Farsi version of any 32-bit version of Windows (well, at least not a legal one!) and AFAIK you cannot even export software currently. But Farsi support is present and one can only assume that one day export will be legal better to make sure things are right now instead of later. :-) michka a new book on internationalization in VB at http://www.i18nWithVB.com/ - Original Message - From: "Roozbeh Pournader" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Michael (michka) Kaplan" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: "Unicode List" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 6:49 AM Subject: Re: Persian decimal separator On Thu, 16 Nov 2000, Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote: The only question I have here is that no one was *ever* suggesting a slash be used for the decimal separator. The suggestion was made for the CURRENCY separator. Since the question was asked (and all of the answers were made) mentioning the decimal separator only, I would have to wonder whether they were answering the actual issue that was under consideration here? They were answering the same issue. No one considers the decimal and currency separator different here, and that has been the reason behind querying about the decimal separator only. They are named the same in Persian, "Momayyez". I have two acquaintances (not connected to MS) who speak Farsi, neither is a linguistic authority or pretends to be. Both recognize the slash as a currency separator, but one of them believes it to be inappropriate to use on non-Farsi currency amounts and both of them admit the matter is mostly theoretical since the Farsi currency does not currently see a need for a currency separator (something we discussed last time, I believed). This is hardly conclusive proof, but if non-technical native speakers can cast doubt on an issue, then obviously there is reason to believe there may be an issue worth investigating? Yes, and that has been the reason behind my investigation. As I told, slash is acceptable as a decimal separator, when an appropriate glyph is not available. I also agree with your sources that first, Iranian Rials won't need any currency separator, since we don't use fractions of Rial anymore. Bank accounts and all other systems truncate the amount to whole Rials (you may know, 1 US Dollar is equal to about 8500 Rials). I can also investigate the problem of using the Persian decimal separator for foreign currencies, but if you want to know about my opponion, you should use the Persian decimal separator if you are using Arabic-Indic digits, and you should use the period if you're using the European digits. Neither slash nor the Persian decimal separator is acceptable between European digit shapes. I am not saying that you or they are wrong and would never pretend to have a true opinion here other than to say I DON'T KNOW (until and unless I live in Iran and learn Farsi to the point where I can respond to the question!). But I am unsure how a company (such as Microsoft, which currently lists the slash as the currency separator for Farsi) can proceed to consider evidence that may well be tainted by having the wrong question asked? Clearly there was some basis for believing that the currency separator was a slash, and there should be a compelling basis for believing that this was a mistake? The basis exists. There are many kinds of these common typographical mistakes in Iran, because of the education system. The professors do not bring the attention of students to these issues, believing these to be unimportant issues. Only curious people will notice these. We are only a developing country, you know. As examples of this, I can tell you about the common mistake of ommitting spaces in the texts written using traditional typewriters. Some people could not understand why a space is needed to separate words when they do not join the consecutive words. And I'm talking about only 10 years ago. The situation is reversed now in case of many computer programs that do not respect ZWNJ, and many computer users now use spaces instead of non-joiners. The simply do not know the difference. Thank you for your attention, Roozbeh.
Re: Persian decimal separator
On Thu, 16 Nov 2000, Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote: I would openly encourage you to help "perpetuate the evidence" so that this change can be evaluated and the right thing can be done in MS products (which as I said currently have the slash as a currency sign). Cites and sources for the investigation, etc. would be very important here. I think can put the text for ISIRI 3342 and the related parts of the Iran University Press Style Guide online; getting their permission will be easy. I do not think there is a localized Farsi version of any 32-bit version of Windows (well, at least not a legal one!) and AFAIK you cannot even export software currently. There is no legal Farsi 32-bit version of Windows available in Iran, but there was once a 16-bit one available. BTW, it depends on how do you interpret legal. Iran is not in the international copyright agreement, so doing a localized Windows is considered legal here. There are more localized versions of Windows than countable. I think a normal user can name at least five outstanding (!) ones. Also, exporting software from Iran is legal. You only need a permission from the Ministry of Guidance and Islamic Culture that's not hard to obtain. Is this against any international agreement? But Farsi support is present and one can only assume that one day export will be legal better to make sure things are right now instead of later. :-) I don't get your point. How are localized versions of Windows in Iran related to "prepetuating the evidence"? Perhaps I'm missing something important... --roozbeh
Re: Persian decimal separator
There is no legal Farsi 32-bit version of Windows available in Iran, but there was once a 16-bit one available. BTW, it depends on how do you interpret legal. Iran is not in the international copyright agreement, so doing a localized Windows is considered legal here. There are more localized versions of Windows than countable. I think a normal user can name at least five outstanding (!) ones. This might just be splitting hairs to some and I have no idea how Microsoft feels about this sort of thing, but if a country will not respect my copyrights then I myself would not consider shipping my software there. For me it would just be a mutual respect issue. :-) Perhaps this an overly harsh way to look at things but I am not one of these large companies that would be able to simultaneously do business with someone I was suing. I think I lack that "big company/big government" perspective very big grin Also, exporting software from Iran is legal. You only need a permission from the Ministry of Guidance and Islamic Culture that's not hard to obtain. Is this against any international agreement? Not that I know of... I was thinking export from the US to Iran, though. But Farsi support is present and one can only assume that one day export will be legal better to make sure things are right now instead of later. :-) I don't get your point. How are localized versions of Windows in Iran related to "prepetuating the evidence"? Perhaps I'm missing something important... I mean that when the product is imported into Iran, the importance of correct NLS info (already obviously high) becomes much higher. michka a new book on internationalization in VB at http://www.i18nWithVB.com/
[OT] Persian version of Windows (was Re: Persian decimal separator)
On Thu, 16 Nov 2000, John Cowan wrote: If the copy cannot show a lawful chain of licensing from Microsoft, then it cannot be sold in Berne Convention countries (i.e. most of the world). This seems reasonable. I think the point is that some day there will be a licensed Persian Windows, and it is good that Microsoft get the Farsi conventions right *before* that day comes. We are trying our best for that being done.
RE: [OT] Localized Persian Windows (was Re: Persian decimal separator)
Microsoft never disclosed Windows source code for localization into Farsi. We once developed a Farsi version of Windows 3.1 entirely in-house and shipped it to Iran. We used a vendor for localization but source bits were never sent to Iran. That product was protected by a dongle which probably was broken within weeks as you mentioned. Houman Microsoft Corporation -Original Message- From: Roozbeh Pournader [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 8:27 AM To: Unicode List Cc: Unicode List Subject: [OT] Localized Persian Windows (was Re: Persian decimal separator) On Thu, 16 Nov 2000, Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote: This might just be splitting hairs to some and I have no idea how Microsoft feels about this sort of thing, but if a country will not respect my copyrights then I myself would not consider shipping my software there. For me it would just be a mutual respect issue. :-) I agree. I am not sure, but I have heard a story that Microsoft has once given the source code to their Arabic Windows 3.1 to a company named "SoftWare Computer" here, and they shipped a Persian version which had a somehow official sense. They used a dongle to prevent illegal copies, but someone broke the code, and illegal copies appeared all over the country. We did not have any laws against illegal software copying then, and the rumors say that Microsoft took out its investment. The main benefits for Microsoft or other international companies supporting Persian will be for people in need of Persian software outside Iran. There are many many Iranian expatriates all around the world, and also there are others who want to support these. I mean that when the product is imported into Iran, the importance of correct NLS info (already obviously high) becomes much higher. You're certainly right. And that's the reason we want to encourage the correct Persian support in any kind of software. I have also heard rumors about the government sending letters to all big governmental organizations asking them to tell about the consequences of accepting the international copyright agreement on their organization. --roozbeh
