Re: [OFFTOPIC] Re: unicode (char as abstract data type)

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
22 Apr 1998 20:04:23 GMT


Followup to: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980422032357.8432D-100000@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us>
By author: Alex Belits <abelits@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> > So it is hard to impossible to gather info about language. User just
> > will not want to tell you. User may even want to write Geek with 'G'
> > in azbuka. Why not?
>
> Information about language is always lost if there is no place to put a
> label. Like, in Unicode.
>

Read the standards! It says language labelling belongs IN A HIGHER
LEVEL PROTOCOL. Incidentally, there is no existing standard for
language labelling. Oh, and don't forget: language labelling is NOT
the same as charset labelling; you seem to continually confuse the two.

> Why? One can make labels as detailed about the language as necessary --
> labeling assumes the extensibility of the labels set, and matching will
> still work because label contains charset name. See MIME for example of
> labeling (not for example of 7-bit encoding, it's unnecessary).

MIME is a horrible example, because it doesn't let you switch
languages in the middle of a document. It doesn't even begin to solve
the problem.

-hpa

-- 
    PGP: 2047/2A960705 BA 03 D3 2C 14 A8 A8 BD  1E DF FE 69 EE 35 BD 74
    See http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/ for web page and full PGP public key
        I am Bahá'í -- ask me about it or see http://www.bahai.org/
   "To love another person is to see the face of God." -- Les Misérables

- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu