From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: Dumb Americans (was INTERNATIONALIZATION: JAPAN, FAR EAST)
Keywords: Unicode ISO10646 CharacterEncoding
Organization: Weber State University  (Ogden, UT)
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 05:36:17 GMT

In article <1isrgpINNneq@life.ai.mit.edu> glenn@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu (Glenn A. Adams) writes:
>In article <1993Jan11.193710.29580@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
>>>>This [language attribution] *must* be in-band for multilingual Unicode
>>>>documents if we are to overcome the (I believe reasonable) objection to
>>>>the lack of information for display localization.
>>>
>>>No, this is incorrect.  Language attribution *is not* necessary for
>>>the legible display of any multilingual Unicode data.  That is, unless
>>>you consider that font attribution is necessary for display.  Neither
>>>Ohta-san's claims nor Vadim's claims have shown that language attributes
>>>are necessary to perform legible display.  If you (or anyone else) can
>>>demonstrably show this to be the case, then I welcome you to do it.
>>>Otherwise, you can take my word (having implemented a Unicode rendering
>>>engine) that language attributes are not necessary.
>>
>>You misunderstand the basis of the objections.  The objections are not
>>made on the basis of legibility, but rather on the [apparent] imposition
>>of cultural imperialism on those languages undergoing unification.  The
>>point is esthetic in many cases, rather than technical.
>>
>>I can say that an English text mixing normal, italic, and bold characters
>>will "look like hell" when printed in a single font.  The point is
>>language attribution so that font selection is possible.  In a monolingual
>>document, the locale information (ala file attribute or per system) is
>>sufficient to provide the rendering clues; a multilingual document is
>>a compound document.
>
>No, I don't misunderstand the basis, I deny that it is a basis.  Furthermore,
>the accusation of "cultural imperialism" is simply nonsense.  The unified
>Han characters in Unicode (10646) were created by joint agreement of
>delegations from China, Japan, and Korea.  If there were anything to this
>claim, do you think that these delegations would have agreed to both the
>principle and the results of the unification?  I rather doubt it.
>Rather, the claims of cultural imperialism are being made precisely by
>those persons who *would* like to impose cultural imperialism in the form
>of cultural purity.  The arguments that are being made about CJK
>unification are of the same order as an argument which would have the
>English alphabet segregated from the French alphabet on the principle
>that unification would destroy the unique identity of the alphabets.

I don't disagree.  However, the distinction is one of telling them they
don't have anything to stand on and one of yanking the soapbox out from
under them by trying to address their objections.  One ignores them and
pisses them off, the other attempts to reach a middle ground (and, from
personal experience, still pisses them off).

If someone bitches about the fit of blue shoes because they want red
shoes, the best fitting blue shoes in the world won't satisfy them.
The best we can hope for is that we give them good fitting blue
shoes and they then bitch about the real issue (the color) instead.
The color of ones shoes does not prevent one from walking in them.

A more justifiable problem is the aesthetics of multilingual text; I
believe this can be handled by font switching using some "rich text"
format to store the file.  I don't argue that legibility is damaged --
I agree with you that it is *not* damaged.  Legibility is not, however,
the issue.  If we can meet the aesthetic arguments, then so much the
better.

As to your English/French example, there are some French citizens who
would agree with the segregation on the grounds you have suggested.
The best we can do is ignore them and anyone else arguing from the
same perspective.

If someone poses some real issues draped in large amounts of B.S., we
need to ignore the B.S. and resolve the real issues.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@icarus.weber.edu
					terry_lambert@novell.com
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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