From: esz001@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Will Overington)
Newsgroups: alt.uu.future,alt.education.distance
Subject: Re: TOOLS Roman (including Esperanto) and Cyrillic over the net
Date: 24 Jul 92 14:50:06 GMT
Organization: Coventry University, Coventry, UK

In article <1992Jul24.103943.28916@ccsun.strath.ac.uk>,
duncan@spd.eee.strathclyde.ac.uk (Duncan C Thomson) writes:
>In alt.education.distance, esz001@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Will Overington) writes:
>>
>>teaching, I am here setting out some thoughts on how we are to be
>>able to send files which need to be used to display English,
>>Esperanto and Russian on the screens of computers, around on the
>>net.
>
>Why not use the ISO standard?  There certainly is one, though I don't know
>it's number.

I shall look into this. It will be an interesting exercise in finding out
how one actually gets hold of a copy of an ISO standard.
I shall ask in our library.
However, I am wondering what it will actually do, in the sense that if
it assumes a Cyrillic keyboard is available and English is not being
used simultaneously in the same document, then it might not do what I
want to achieve. Still, we shall have to find out. I find it all very
interesting.

>           .  As far as Esperanto is concerned, what is the problem with
>using either of the two most popular representations - the trailing-x and
>preceding-circumflex - the steloj system is too complicated for a bear of
>very little brain such as myself...

It depends what one is trying to achieve.
I am trying to have a system where one can type on an ordinary keyboard
and every time you press a key a letter appears on the screen, accented if
desired.

Also, so that a file of text can be displayed without disrupting the page
layout because a line has one, two, seven, whatever, accents in it and so
displays as a line of text one, two, seven, whatever, characters shorter.

Consider a few sentences.

He sells eight apples.

Li vendas ok pomojn.

No accents, no problem!

Now, let him buy the apples, that is use acetas where the c is circumflexed.

Your two suggested methods give

Li acxetas ok pomojn.

Li a^cetas ok pomojn.

Imagine keying these in with a correct display. The x form has to change
its mind, though I suppose that, in fairness, the c becoming circumflexed
after the x is typed might look quite neat. The ^ form, with the ^ in front
would need to either not respond to the key press, or would need to
temporarily put a motif on the screen until the c were pressed, whereupon
the motif would be overwritten by the c circumflex.
I don't like the x method and would rather see H used after the letter if
it came to it, including H after a u where a u breve is intended.
However, the steloj system would have the sentence as follows.

Li_acetas ok pomojn.

The display would show the underscore as a space and the c circumflexed.

Now let him eat the apples.

He eats eight apples.

Li manGas ok pomojn.

Here the G keystroke would be displayed as g circumflex, as the second
letter of the word that it is in is lowercase, so a lowercase letter is
regarded as being intended.

If the accent is on the first or second character, use an underscore
instead of a space. If the accent is on the third or later character, use
the opposite case to the second letter of the word.

There may be a RETURN character between the underscore and the first letter
of the word if desired. This means that page layout is not disrupted if
the accent is on the first or second letter of a word that is at the start
of a line, yet not at the start of a sentence.

If the accent is on the first or second letter of the first word of a
sentence, simply start the sentence with a lowercase letter. The steloj
system will capitalize the first letter of the sentence and accent the
first or second letter of the sentence as appropriate.

Does he eat eight apples?

cu li manGas ok pomojn?

So, let us now ask if she bought and will eat nine apples.
Here I use she and nine in order to bring in two more accented characters.
This is why he and eight were used in the first place!  :-)

cu_si_acetis kaj manGos naU pomojn?

Here there are five accented characters, with each of the three types
of use used at least once. Note how c circumflex appears twice, the
first use being on a capital letter.

Now, as a contrived example, say an advertisement exhorting the consumer
to buy nine apples, we have the following.

Buy nine apples!

acetu naU pomojn!

The contriving is so as to state that the a in acetu would be capitalized
on the screen display and the c in acetu would be lowercase and circumflexed.

On the matter of the adding of a Cyrillic facility to the steloj system,
I have got the logic working and am able to demonstrate it working with
five capital letters, namely the first five letters of the Russian
alphabet, by keying in [ABVGD] where the [ and ] characters are displayed
as spaces.

I intend to use 26 Roman letters to signify 26 Cyrillic letters, 10
digits to signify 5 Cyrillic letters and < > + = to signify the four
characters, uppercase, lowercase, uppercase, lowercase in the order
that they appear in the Russian alphabet (my book is at home).
I decided upon H to be the character that looks like a squarish U with
a tail and has a TS sound. The mnemonic HUTS helps in remembering it.
I assigned 5 and 6 to be the uppercase and lowercase of the character
that has an i as in "it" sound and which is shown as a curious character
with two separate pieces of ink against the background.

Incidentally, whilst working out the coding, it occured to me that the
Russian vowels that I intend to represent using a, e, i, o, u are mostly
very close to the sounds of Esperanto vowels. The o is a bit different,
being as in pot, rather than the Esperanto as in bore, but certainly not
the final o of cornetto. I have used u for the sound like oo in fool, which
I wondered about a bit, asking myself how "ful" would be pronounced in
Esperanto.
Xref: sparky alt.uu.future:124 alt.education.distance:252