From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/19722 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?= Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Info on Internationalization Date: 06 Dec 1998 09:11:41 -0500 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <199812022334.SAA03580@math.gatech.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035158020 13065 80.91.224.250 (20 Oct 2002 23:53:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 23:53:40 +0000 (UTC) Cc: "$(BH>ED(B $(B7u0l(B Handa Kenichi" Return-Path: Original-Received: from gizmo.hpc.uh.edu (gizmo.hpc.uh.edu [129.7.102.31]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA17599 for ; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 10:14:29 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@sina.hpc.uh.edu [129.7.3.5]) by gizmo.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id JAA27030; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 09:14:06 -0600 Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Sun, 06 Dec 1998 09:14:03 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (root@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA26344 for ; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 09:13:49 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca (rtsq.grics.qc.ca [199.84.132.81]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA17575 for ; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 10:13:41 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from ariel.progiciels-bpi.ca by jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id KAA07042; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 10:12:23 -0500 Original-Received: from icule.progiciels-bpi.ca (uucp@localhost) by ariel.progiciels-bpi.ca (950413.SGI.8.6.12/950213.SGI) via UUCP id KAA29621; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 10:14:03 -0800 Original-Received: by icule.progiciels-bpi.ca (8.8.8/8.8.8) id JAA01257; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 09:11:42 -0500 Original-To: ding@gnus.org X-Face: "b_m|CE6#'Q8fliQrwHl9K,]PA_o'*S~Dva{~b1n*)K*A(BIwQW.:LY?t4~xhYka_.LV?Qq `}X|71X0ea&H]9Dsk!`kxBXlG;q$mLfv_vtaHK_rHFKu]4'<*LWCyUe@ZcI6"*wB5M@[m writes: > (I found the terminology in the document interesting, though -- they > refer to UFT-8 as a "charset". Hee hee hee hee! Ok, they explain > that it's really a CES (character encoding scheme), but it's a charset > anyway. (Not a character set; that's different. A charset. :-) I had a similar problem in `recode'. Users did convince me that since the UTF-8 encoding scheme is exclusively used with the UCS (Universal Character Set), it is kind of conceptual overkill to consider a double layer, and just simpler to take UTF-8 as a charset. This *is* abusive, of course, but I now think it is handy to accept it that way. Also, beware that all UCS related things (Unicode, ISO 10646, UCS-N and UTF-N) are a religious issue for many people. It relies to Han unification (for example, attributing a single code to similar Chinese and Japanese glyphs), to which many Japanese *strongly* object. So, any blind UTF-8! UTF-8! UTF-8! attitudes are prone to be very irritating to some people, and we should be careful about our own attitudes. Of course, UTF-8 has its own elegances and various technical merits, which surely appeal me a lot, but we should never loose sight and perspective that charsets (or encodings) are there to serve people, and not the other way around. We surely may discuss at length for Mule or against Mule, which currently ignores UCS (yet this is in the process of changing). The FSF choice favouring Mule was indeed taking a position within a religious fight about Han unification, and we know that the FSF likes politics :-). For the poor little me, Mule is not technically appealing (to put it very mildly!). However, there are two great qualities I recognise in Mule: the first is the incredible amount of knowledge and experience which has been melt within it (especially about input methods), the second is to bring a discording voice in our Americanized views, remembering us that we should not bulldoze people. -- François Pinard mailto:pinard@iro.umontreal.ca Join the free Translation Project! http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard