RE: Linux Console in UTF-8 - future developments

[Thomas Chan <tc31@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Maiorana, Jason wrote:

> >I would argue strongly that we do NOT want the console to do anything
> >other than traditional VT100-style left-to-right text output. Bidi or
> >quaddi output are best left to specialized applications
> 
> That is the status quorum right now: English is pretty much the
> language of computers, and if you want to use them seriously 
> (command line or programming) you have to learn english.

I think English-style ltr, ttb is satisfactory, due to this situation, and
any scripts that are adaptable to it (e.g., CJK) just happen to be lucky.

You are right to raise the importance of English in using computers,
because that is where the terminology has been most developed--if we add
complex scripts (vertical, bidi, etc), we automatically take on the
spectre of handling multiple scripts simultaneously, because there will be
words for which there is no native equivalent, or system strings that are
in "English" (e.g., pathnames, variables, etc), and these will appear in
English.  As an exercise, look at CJK--they are in the best situation so
far--no bidi concerns like Hebrew or Arabic, no complex shaping concerns
to the extent of Indic scripts, amenable to horizontal layout, etc.--and
yet, they can't avoid "English" strings intruding, even if they are as
trivial as numbers 1, 2, 3.


Thomas Chan
tc31@xxxxxxxxxxx

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Linux-UTF8:   i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive:      http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/