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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XML Blueberry (non-ASCII name characters in Japan)
 Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote: >> Greeks want to write Greek in the Greek script. >> Wherefore it is encoded in Unicode and other encodings, and >> allowed in XML names. > > But these are not the same thing. Greek was in Unicode 2.0, and > therefore could be included in XML names without significant cost. I have already addressed this finders-keepers-losers-weepers argument. > But the > question we have to answer today is whether there is sufficient > benefit to adding the Yi script today, to justify breaking the > entire existing XML infrastructure, and introducing more > incompatibility into the XML world. I think you exaggerate the degree of non-uniformity. There are already a lot of options in XML processing. > Given that the Yi language can > be used in XML markup today, even if the Yi script can't, I don't > think the possible benefits outweigh the costs. There is a lot of benefit to Yi users, and some disbenefit to programmers and their employers. Short of a pure market mechanism (in which case nothing but Latin and perhaps Japanese would have made it in at all), how are we to compare these benefits and disbenefits? > Do you really think that all 800 million Spanish speakers are going > to start writing markup in Spanish? That all one billion Chinese > speakers are going to start writing markup in Chinese? It's > ridiculous to assume that more than a tiny minority of speakers are > going to write markup in any language, no matter how well > supported. It's ridiculous to suppose that I meant anything of the sort. There is all the difference in the world between "few, by choice" and "none at all, by compulsion". If I were a regular user of XML and one of the affected languages, I would insist that the parsers available to me allowed markup in my language, and the XML Recommendation be damned. (There are non-conformant parsers such as Aelfred that can do the job.) Since I would probably not be able to vote with my wallet, I would have to rely on those with deeper wallets, or louder voices, to get the job done. > OK. So propose an alternative. How do you suggest proving that > there's a genuine need to write markup in these scripts? I think that talk of *need* is misconceived; as I said, there is no *need* to have Greek, much less Thaana, markup. People *want* to use their own language, that's all. Why should the "newer" script users be exempt from this desire? -- There is / one art || John Cowan <jcowan@r...> no more / no less || http://www.reutershealth.com to do / all things || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with art- / lessness \\ -- Piet Hein 
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