🚀 go-pugleaf

Forwarded message:
> Sender: "Daniel R. Kegel" <dank@alumni.cco.caltech.edu>
> Subject: Don't we need a standard way to represent language in Unicode?
>
> [ietf-charsets' charter is to decide how best to represent text on
>  the Internet, now that ASCII is no longer enough for most Internet users.
>  Most members of the list seem happy with Unicode.  Mr. Ohta is violently
>  opposed, and has proposed extending Unicode with several bits *per character*
>  to indicate language.  When that was shot down, he proposed an extension
>  of ISO2022 instead which completely ignores Unicode.  I think midway
>  between Mr. Ohta's two proposals might make more sense.  -dan]
>
> I am concerned that Japan may ignore Unicode [see the archives
> of INSOFT-L referred to in my last message] because it fails to address
> an important need from their point of view: encoding language.
>
> A mixed Korean/Japanese/Chinese document in *plain* Unicode CANNOT be
> displayed in a palatable way.  This renders plain Unicode unacceptable
> for transmitting this type of document over the Internet.
> Worse, there is no standard way of marking up a Unicode document to
> indicate language, so even adorned Unicode cannot be used interoperably for
> this kind of document on the net.
>
> Of course, we could wait for UCS-4 to solve this problem- but it isn't
> anywhere near ready, won't be for many years, and IMHO is overkill for
> the problem at hand.
>
> A quick and dirty way to address the problem would be to define a set of
> control codes as an extension of Unicode to indicate language, in much
> the same way as ISO2022 defines control codes to switch character sets.
> Display applications which do not support different fonts for
> different languages can simply ignore the codes.
> Applications which deal with non-Han languages need not bother with
> the codes, as plain Unicode is sufficient for those languages.
> The codes should cause little overhead, as most documents do
> not change language very frequently, and they can in any case be omitted
> when not needed.
>
> Unless something like this is done in a way that gains at least
> grudging acceptance in Japan, we may not end up with a truly interoperable
> method of representing text on the Internet!
>
> Folks, do you want Unicode to be the universal way to represent text, as I do?
> Do you agree that there is a serious disconnect with Japan on the
> usability of Unicode for mixed C/J/K text?
> Isn't a standard way of layering language encoding on Unicode desirable?
> Or am I way out in left field here?
> - Dan Kegel (dank@alumni.caltech.edu)
>

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