Re: Brian Kernighan, maybe I'm not worthy, maybe I'm scum


"Richard Heathfield" <rjh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
Malcolm McLean said:

This whole subject is one for which a very good solution is most unlikely
to gain any ground, because "good-enough" solutions have prevailed for
too long.

There's another problem with big character sets. Say I wish to send an email to Foo Ying, in China. The email will be in English, of course, which he speaks, but being a Chinaman his address is now in the Chinese characters.

However I'm not confident about displaying foo and ying on my computer, I can't generate the characters on my keyboard, and though I've maybe seen what they look like, to an English person all Chinese characters look pretty similar. Then when I see the characters I don't know how to pronounce them, so I can't go "is that foo, fuh or phew", I've got to say "you mean the one with the little man and the kind of squiggly bit?". Finally I can't with confidence even copy them down legibly on a piece of paper. So although it is maybe physically possible to generate "foo ying" on my machine, actually I have huge difficulties. I'm probably on the phone to China asking for advice.

On the other hand if foo ying says "that's ampersand capital F and double Oh semicolon". I type it in, fire up the browser, and the email is on its way.

--
Free games and programming goodies.
http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~bgy1mm

.

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