[idn] Re: I don't want to be facing 8-bit bugs in 2013

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 03:07:53AM +0859, Masataka Ohta wrote:
> While marrying wih a Mexican woman is, if my wife and children allow,
> an fascinating idea, I'm saying, with your example (actually, European and
> Japanese contexts happen to be compatible, but to follow your
> example, let's assume they are not), the child must say
> european-local-unicode and japanese-local-unicode at the same time,
> which is impossible.
>
> Just saying "unicode" is not enough to display "Ohta y Col_n" with
> japanese local unicode-based character set.
>
> Unicode is not useful in international context.

You're making assertions based on local implementation decisions.  It
is possible to have implementations that use a unicode font that is
fully populated. It may not look very nice, and it may offend japanese
eyes if the chinese variants of the han-unified characters are used,
or chinese eyes if the japanese variants of the han-unified characters
are used in said universal font, but it would at least be
recongizeable and readable by all.

(BTW, it's this kind of nonsense and parochialism which has sometimes
caused some folks to claim, "it would be easier if we could just all
teach them English.")

- Ted