Re: [idn] Dots, and a path to working IDNs

[liana.ydisg@juno.com]

Hello, 
I have been speaking about the way to put characters
inside an operating system since 1990.  It has been ignored.
So, we keep getting crashes from character input
modules, as well as Japanese handheld wireless 
devices.  But I consider this is a necessary step for
people to try out alternatives.  No harm at all!  

And please note:
There is no requirement or necessity for everybody to 
change!

But the impack for using such an encoding will evolutionize
Chinese software engineering.  Please read my
article "A user oriented virtual encoding for characters and
 icons can cause a prominent Leap in Chinese Software
 Design" in  Chinese Information Processing, Feb. 1997.
Sorry, it is only in Chinese.

In case anyone cares:  "A language oriented Chinese 
Encoding for multilingual computing environments" 
is published in English, in Proceedings of the 1995
 International  Conference on Computer Processing 
of Oriental Languages, Page 323. 

Liana Ye

On Fri, 1 Jun 2001 11:07:00 -0700 (PDT) "Sean X. Zhang"
<sean_xzhang@yahoo.com> writes:
> --- liana.ydisg@juno.com wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, 1 Jun 2001 02:55:34 +0000 "Adam M. Costello"
> > <amc@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:
> > > liana.ydisg@juno.com wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Allow me to comment on your UTF-8 as a long term solution.
> > > 
> > > If I understand correctly, you are proposing an alternative 
> model 
> > > for
> > > representing characters.  Currently, characters are represented 
> as
> > > indices into a table.  If a character is not in the table, it 
> cannot 
> > > be
> > > represented.
> > > 
> > > You are proposing that instead of a table of characters, we have 
> a
> > > table of character-building-blocks, and to represent characters 
> as
> > > instructions for how to compose them from the building blocks.  
> This
> > > would allow new/obscure characters to be used without deploying 
> new
> > > fonts everywhere.
> > > 
> > > (You also propose to represent the building blocks phonetically 
> > > using
> > > ASCII, but I think that's an orthogonal issue.)
> > > 
> > > Is my understanding roughly correct?
> > >
> > 
> > Yes.
> >  
> 
> This is indeed an interesting idea and has been discussed numerous 
> times
> in other forums. To "represent" characters as described above would 
> have 
> to introduce fundamental changes to all applications and all 
> operating
> systems utilizing the characters. That's what ISO-10646 and Unicode 
> are about. I'd prefer to work within the constraint of existing 
> encoding
> mechanisms. I may be wrong, but I don't think this list is the most 
> appropriate forum for introducing these changes. 
> 
> Sean X. Zhang
> 
> >  
> > > It's an interesting idea, but dramatically different from the 
> > > current
> > > text model.  I suspect that you'd have to change lots of things 
> in 
> > > all
> > > applications and all operating systems to make this work.
> > > 
> 
> ....
> 
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