From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Dec 15 00:08:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id AAA03265 for chat-outgoing; Mon, 15 Dec 1997 00:08:06 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (gregl1.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.136.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id AAA03228 for ; Mon, 15 Dec 1997 00:07:53 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.8.8/8.8.7) id SAA01002; Mon, 15 Dec 1997 18:37:43 +1030 (CST) (envelope-from grog) Message-ID: <19971215183738.35448@lemis.com> Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 18:37:38 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: Terry Lambert Cc: perhaps@yes.no, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: blocksize on devfs entries (and related) References: <19971215073048.57829@lemis.com> <199712150658.XAA26680@usr09.primenet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.84e In-Reply-To: <199712150658.XAA26680@usr09.primenet.com>; from Terry Lambert on Mon, Dec 15, 1997 at 06:58:53AM +0000 Organisation: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Mon, Dec 15, 1997 at 06:58:53AM +0000, Terry Lambert wrote: >>> When you think about it, it is fairly seldom an average user need to >>> display multiple languages in the same document. >> >> It's fairly seldom that an average user will need to run more than one >> program at a time, so what's all this fuss about multitasking >> operating systems? >> >> I often need to display multiple languages at once. In European >> countries, such as Norway, they may need to display English, Swedish >> and Norwegian in a single document. Sure, you can represent all of >> those with ISO 8859-1, but think about the Japanese, who have four >> alphabets anyway, and the Singaporeans, who have four national >> languages, each potentially with its own character set. In those >> countries the requirement is very frequent. > > The Japanese can represent 21 languages. There is Unicode round-trip > capability for JIS 208 + JIS 212. > > What is missing is the ability to seperate a bilingual Chinese and > Japanese document, such that a Japanese does not have to sully his > eyes with Chinese pretending to be Japanese. I don't think I've ever seen a Japanese document without Kanji. I suppose it's possible, but it's not common. On the other hands, I have seen Japanese texts *only* in Kanji. What do the Japanese here say? Does Terry's statement make practical sense? > I think there is a valid need for the ability to multinationalize; the > use of translation consoles and linguistic scholarship are two of the > examples where this would be needed (but neither have the proposed > alternatives provided code pages for "Linear B"...). > > But multinationalization is the exception, not the rule, I would guess that outside the US it's the rule. In that connection, a joke I heard in India earlier this year: What do you call somebody who speaks four languages? -- quadrilingual. What do you call somebody who speaks three languages? -- trilingual. What do you call somebody who speaks two languages? -- bilingual. What do you call somebody who speaks only one language -- American. > and the ability to do the work is cumbersome, but adequately > provided by the ability to produce Compound Documents. Certainly the American approach that it's the "exception" doesn't make things easier. > I think this fuss is political. I think it will go away when the > first company prodices something which works. I'm not sure which fuss you're talking about, but then, I came in after things had been going a while. Certainly I'd expect people to be happier when they have something which works. And I'd lay a bet that the winning solution will come from Europe or Asia. > People, in general, do not give a damn about the underlying > technology; they care about whether the underlying technilogy works > to provide them with what they see in the forground, and _how_ it > does this is a "don't care" state. To wit Microsoft. Greg