Quoting James Kass <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> Waiting isn't much of an option, the users need results now.
> > Even when the rendering technology catches up, the old 386's
> and such that are in use in places like the Sudan may not be able
> to support an OS capable of using new rendering technology.
>
> Similar circumstances may apply to many of the hundreds or
> thousands of 'Unicode-challenged' writing systems mentioned
> by Peter Constable.
>
actuallu not unicode-challenged, since unicode has a mechanism to support them,
more OS- and software-challenged.
>
>
> Andrew also mentioned custom (8-bit) code pages, which are widely
> used. Lately, people who haven't considered the lack of alternatives
> have taken to criticizing such practicality, calling it "font-hacks"
> and
actually i don't think they're widely used. But I'd rather not get into
Sudanese politics at the moment.
> so forth. If you do make custom code page web sites, perhaps you
> should consider maintaining duplicate web pages in Unicode. Even
> though the Unicode pages wouldn't display, they would be handy to
> send as links in response to anyone complaining about non-standard
> code pages.
>
our intially intention was to use a unicode solution, but have also
investigated a custom 8-bit code page.
One of the areas that has interested me for a while is teh area of langauge
retention among refugee communities.
My Dinka friends are hopping to develop a trilingual web site (Engliah, Arabic,
Dinka) that would provide information about their culture and provide resources
that can be used to teach their children their own langauge. This could be done
in print, the reason that they wish to place the resources online, is to
provide these resources to other Dinka refugees that have settled in other
countries.
>
> Whether the PUA or custom code pages are used, some kind of
> software which converts to and from Unicode would be
> helpful to assure that users of older hardware can continue
> to communicate with the "modern" world.
>
philosophically I'd prefer not to use the PUA.
Its quite possible that we'll used a 8-bit character set initially, and that
i'll construct unicode versions for private testing and evaluating.
since i'm not a programmer, I'm not able to throw together such a utility. I've
seen a number of utilities that allow you to convert between unicode and a
range of defined character sets and encodings, but I haven't found a utility
that does this and that would allow you to easily construct custom mapping
tables to use with it as well.
If anyone is aware of such a tool, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Andj.
Andrew Cunningham
Multilingual Technical Project Officer
Vicnet, State Library of Victoria
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
