Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Marcel Schneider via Unicode]

On Sat, 15 Jul 2017 22:30:03 +0200, Philippe Verdy wrote:
> 
> As well the feminine form of the common adjective "ambigu" has been 
> "regularized" to place the diaeresis ("tréma" in French) on the pronounced u 
> rather than an on the mute e added for the regular feminine "ambigüe": it 
> also correctly forces the pronunciation of this u, which would otherwise be 
> mute too as an "u" after a "g" is often there only to avoid to read it as a 
> "j" (like in "exergue", "digue" and many terms ending in "-gue(s)" where only 
> the final /g/ is pronounced). Not writing this tréma anywhere would be false. 
> The tradition placed the diaereis on the mute e but it was not clear that it 
> meant pronoucing the "u" before as a vowel.
>
> For terms like "ambigüité" it is also more natural to place it on the "u" (to 
> break the normal "gu" digram which is consonnantal only and have some 
> vocal rendering of the "u" vowel, even if here it would be pronounced more 
> like a short but clearly spelled half-vowel sliding to the next "i", as in 
> "huile" or "lui", but still not like a /w/ as in "oui" /wi/: normal French 
> never pronounces an isolated "u" as /u/ like in English, except where it 
> occurs in 
> the French digram "ou" /u/ which is itself never like an English diphtong; 
> the standard French "u" is pronounced like the German /y/ written as the 
> digram "ue" or as "ü" with its umlaut... which is not a diareasis 
> phonetically; French transforms this "u" /y/ into a gliding semivowel where 
> it 
> immediately precedes another non-mute and non-nasal vowel; but French 
> ortography has no specific letter for this semivowel which remains written 
> "u", or "ü" only where it has to be detached to avoid prononcing it as with 
> normal digrams composed with it)

Indeed, following the basic grammatical meaning of the diaeresis as the 
“resolution of a diphthong into two syllables” (Liddell), one might 
wonder 
whether the tréma should be placed on the first vowel or on the second vowel. 
On 'oe' it stays the old way: "Tronoën", "Citroën". Since Iʼve been kindly 
informed off-list that this point of the reform actually “regularizes” (as you 
put it) a mistake, Iʼll have to make use of the optionality of applying the new 
rules, and reset the words in my files to the old spelling. As you know, I 
disagree with that way of designing standards.

> 2017-07-15 2:32 GMT+02:00 Marcel Schneider via Unicode :
>
> > On Fri, 7 Jul 2017 16:14:04 +0100 (BST), William_J_G Overington via Unicode 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > […]
> > >
> > > For example, it mentioned the u diaeresis used in French, though I 
> > > learned later that words that have a u diaeresis in French are rather 
> > > rare.
> > >
> > Today, words containing 'u diaeresis' have become more frequent in French, 
> > since last fall (2016) a reformed orthography designed as soon
> > as in 1990 [1] has become valid (though it is not mandatory [2]). Among the 
> > novelties, it specifies that words like "to disambiguate" have
> > the diaeresis shifted from the last 'i' of «désambiguïser» to the 'u' of 
> > «désambigüiser».
> > 
> > Kind regards,
> > 
> > Marcel
> > 
> > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography#Tr.C3.A9ma
> > [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography#cite_note-6
> > 

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Philippe Verdy via Unicode]

As well the feminine form of the common adjective "ambigu" has been
"regularized" to place the diaeresis ("tréma" in French) on the pronounced
u rather than an on the mute e added for the regular feminine "ambigüe": it
also correctly forces the pronunciation of this u, which would otherwise be
mute too as an "u" after a "g" is often there only to avoid to read it as a
"j" (like in "exergue", "digue" and many terms ending in "-gue(s)" where
only the final /g/ is pronounced). Not writing this tréma anywhere would be
false. The tradition placed the diaereis on the mute e but it was not clear
that it meant pronoucing the "u" before as a vowel.

For terms like "ambigüité" it is also more natural to place it on the "u"
(to break the normal "gu" digram which is consonnantal only and have some
vocal rendering of the "u" vowel, even if here it would be pronounced more
like a short but clearly spelled half-vowel sliding to the next "i", as in
"huile" or "lui", but still not like a /w/ as in "oui" /wi/: normal French
never pronounces an isolated "u" as /u/ like in English, except where it
occurs in the French digram "ou" /u/ which is itself never like an English
diphtong; the standard French "u" is pronounced like the German /y/ written
as the digram "ue" or as "ü" with its umlaut... which is not a diareasis
phonetically; French transforms this "u" /y/ into a gliding semivowel where
it immediately precedes another non-mute and non-nasal vowel; but French
ortography has no specific letter for this semivowel which remains written
"u", or "ü" only where it has to be detached to avoid prononcing it as with
normal digrams composed with it)

a

2017-07-15 2:32 GMT+02:00 Marcel Schneider via Unicode 
:

> On Fri, 7 Jul 2017 16:14:04 +0100 (BST), William_J_G Overington via
> Unicode wrote:
> >
> […]
> >
> > For example, it mentioned the u diaeresis used in French, though I
> learned later that words that have a u diaeresis in French are rather rare.
> >
> Today, words containing 'u diaeresis' have become more frequent in French,
> since last fall (2016) a reformed orthography designed as soon
> as in 1990 [1] has become valid (though it is not mandatory [2]). Among
> the novelties, it specifies that words like "to disambiguate" have
> the diaeresis shifted from the last 'i' of «désambiguïser» to the 'u' of
> «désambigüiser».
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Marcel
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography#Tr.C3.A9ma
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography#
> cite_note-6
>
>

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Marcel Schneider via Unicode]

On Fri, 7 Jul 2017 16:14:04 +0100 (BST), William_J_G Overington via Unicode 
wrote:
> 
[…]
> 
> For example, it mentioned the u diaeresis used in French, though I learned 
> later that words that have a u diaeresis in French are rather rare.
> 
Today, words containing 'u diaeresis' have become more frequent in French, 
since last fall (2016) a reformed orthography designed as soon 
as in 1990 [1] has become valid (though it is not mandatory [2]). Among the 
novelties, it specifies that words like "to disambiguate" have 
the diaeresis shifted from the last 'i' of «désambiguïser» to the 'u' of 
«désambigüiser».

Kind regards,

Marcel

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography#Tr.C3.A9ma
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography#cite_note-6

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Asmus Freytag via Unicode]

  
  
On 7/8/2017 12:28 PM, Richard
  Wordingham via Unicode wrote:


  On Sat, 8 Jul 2017 09:04:39 -0700
Asmus Freytag via Unicode  wrote:


  
But some handling
of combining mark (and also the new emoji sequences) would equally
constitute "basic" knowledge, with the Unicode algorithms like
sorting,

  
  
Which major applications actually use the Unicode Collation Algorithm
for sorting, that is for the key comparison part? ICU doesn't.

Richard.



That's an interesting question, but not
necessarily a reason not to use it as a basis for teaching about
locale-dependendent sorting. Most students wouldn't continue
designing or implementing such an algorithm, but many may write
software that uses (or should) use something that's functionally
equivalent to UCA (even if different in details).
A./

  

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Richard Wordingham via Unicode]

On Sat, 8 Jul 2017 09:04:39 -0700
Asmus Freytag via Unicode  wrote:

> But some handling
> of combining mark (and also the new emoji sequences) would equally
> constitute "basic" knowledge, with the Unicode algorithms like
> sorting,

Which major applications actually use the Unicode Collation Algorithm
for sorting, that is for the key comparison part? ICU doesn't.

Richard.

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Asmus Freytag via Unicode]

  
  
On 7/8/2017 3:36 AM, Otto Stolz via
  Unicode wrote:

Übung
  Unicode
Thanks, it's been too long.
Anyway, I tried it, and the top search page
yielded at least one programming exercise for UTF-8. That's the
minimum level of Unicode proficiency that I would expect from CS
students. But some handling of combining mark (and also the new
emoji sequences) would equally constitute "basic" knowledge, with
the Unicode algorithms like sorting, line break, bidi etc covering
the next layer. Not yet seen any indication that there's instruction
devoted to them.
Non-ASCII Unicode code values are tested in
conjunction with mathematical chess and other symbols in some
exercises, which renders them culturally more neutral.
  
A./

  

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Otto Stolz via Unicode]

Hello,

am 2017-07-07 um 20:45 Uhr hat Asmus Freytag geschrieben:
I also checked whether there are accessible homework assignments that 
mention Unicode ("Hausaufgabe Unicode"). I didn't go very deep, but it 
seems that it's not untypical to relegate Unicode to a sidebar, 
explaining the "\u" notation and mentioning that you get ASCII if you 
set the upper byte to 0 (in a UTF-16 string, as supported by Java etc.).


Try also “Übung Unicode”.

Best wishes,
   Otto

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Rebecca T via Unicode]

> That might be a good thing.

Yeah. Very seriously, it’s very important to introduce Unicode early on in
CS
education, even in a “hey, it’s not OK to exclude people who don’t speak
English or people whose names have diacritics from using the programs you
create” sort of way.

Ignorance and apathy for the world’s citizens is a terrible thing and I hope
that every year brings more access to tech, Unicode-enabled and ready, to
more
of humanity.


On Fri, Jul 7, 2017 at 3:55 PM, Doug Ewell via Unicode 
wrote:

> Asmus Freytag wrote:
>
> > I've not (yet) located any assignments that try to address any of the
> > "tricky" issues in the use of Unicode.
>
> That might be a good thing. Many introductory lessons or chapters or
> talks about Unicode dive almost immediately into the complexities and
> weirdnesses, much more so than with other technical topics. This scares
> newbies and they walk away thinking every aspect of Unicode is complex
> and weird.
>
> --
> Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org
>
>

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Andre Schappo via Unicode]

Interesting. Thanks Asmus.

So what of other countries? Anyone on this list from China, Japan, Korea, 
Russia, Thailand ...etc... What is the situation in your countries with respect 
to Unicode education in your country's Schools, Colleges and Universities?

TIA

André Schappo

> On 7 Jul 2017, at 19:45, Asmus Freytag via Unicode  
> wrote:
> 
> I performed a quick search "Informatik und Unicode" to see whether I could 
> find documents from German academic institutions discussing Unicode in the 
> context of computer science (Informatik).
> 
> Among the first page of search results I found a number of summaries and 
> presentations that may have been (or possibly are) usable as introductory 
> lectures.
> 
> One item looked like it could have been intended as source material for 
> secondary schools rather than for use in the University.
> 
> I also checked whether there are accessible homework assignments that mention 
> Unicode ("Hausaufgabe Unicode"). I didn't go very deep, but it seems that 
> it's not untypical to relegate Unicode to a sidebar, explaining the "\u" 
> notation and mentioning that you get ASCII if you set the upper byte to 0 (in 
> a UTF-16 string, as supported by Java etc.).
> 
> I've not (yet) located any assignments that try to address any of the 
> "tricky" issues in the use of Unicode.
> 
> A./
> 
> 
> On 7/7/2017 2:02 AM, Andre Schappo via Unicode wrote:
>> 
>> There is some evidence that Unicode is now being introduced to Computer 
>> Science pupils in UK Schools. Hove Park School give a summary of their 
>> Computer Science curriculum for Years 8 and 9 
>> http://www.hovepark.brighton-hove.sch.uk/department/computer-science
>> 
>> From Year 9 curriculum summary:  "• Students code text into binary using 
>> ASCII and understand the limitations of this and the need for Unicode"
>> 
>> I think it unlikely they give much coverage of Unicode at Hove Park School 
>> but it is a promising start. Personally I am much encouraged, as Computer 
>> Science education in the UK, at all levels, continues to be dominated by 
>> ASCII.
>> 
>> …and…
>> 
>> as part of my continuing endeavours to get Computer Science/IT/ICT 
>> Internationalization on the School/College/University curricula I recently 
>> setup a google discussion forum 
>> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/computer-science-curriculum-internationalization
>>  
>> 
>>  If you know of any academics who might be interested please do let them 
>> know of this new forum. Unicode is, of course, a fundamental building block 
>> for internationalization and so should feature prominently in Computer 
>> Science teaching, at all levels.
>> 
>> André Schappo
>> 
> 

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Asmus Freytag via Unicode]

On 7/7/2017 12:55 PM, Doug Ewell via Unicode wrote:

Asmus Freytag wrote:


I've not (yet) located any assignments that try to address any of the
"tricky" issues in the use of Unicode.

That might be a good thing. Many introductory lessons or chapters or
talks about Unicode dive almost immediately into the complexities and
weirdnesses, much more so than with other technical topics. This scares
newbies and they walk away thinking every aspect of Unicode is complex
and weird.


For a CS curriculum you really want more than asking students to use 
Unicode to spell their name for a modified "Hello World!" program. (For 
a German university, this is an interesting assignment as at least half 
if not more of the students would be able to complete this assignment 
using the ASCII subset except for a small minority, the others would 
not actually need to use something like the \u syntax, as the local 
keyboard would work for their names).


Some of the presentations I found did mention collation and similar 
issues (and gave non-Latin examples) but I have not located any homework 
assignments that cover any of these issues (and they are not corner 
cases, but the ordinary complexity of text data).


A./

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Doug Ewell via Unicode]

Asmus Freytag wrote:

> I've not (yet) located any assignments that try to address any of the
> "tricky" issues in the use of Unicode. 

That might be a good thing. Many introductory lessons or chapters or
talks about Unicode dive almost immediately into the complexities and
weirdnesses, much more so than with other technical topics. This scares
newbies and they walk away thinking every aspect of Unicode is complex
and weird.
 
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[Asmus Freytag via Unicode]

I performed a quick search "Informatik und Unicode" to see whether I 
could find documents from German academic institutions discussing 
Unicode in the context of computer science (Informatik).


Among the first page of search results I found a number of summaries and 
presentations that may have been (or possibly are) usable as 
introductory lectures.


One item looked like it could have been intended as source material for 
secondary schools rather than for use in the University.


I also checked whether there are accessible homework assignments that 
mention Unicode ("Hausaufgabe Unicode"). I didn't go very deep, but it 
seems that it's not untypical to relegate Unicode to a sidebar, 
explaining the "\u" notation and mentioning that you get ASCII if you 
set the upper byte to 0 (in a UTF-16 string, as supported by Java etc.).


I've not (yet) located any assignments that try to address any of the 
"tricky" issues in the use of Unicode.


A./


On 7/7/2017 2:02 AM, Andre Schappo via Unicode wrote:


There is some evidence that Unicode is now being introduced to 
Computer Science pupils in UK Schools. Hove Park School give a summary 
of their Computer Science curriculum for Years 8 and 9 
http://www.hovepark.brighton-hove.sch.uk/department/computer-science


From Year 9 curriculum summary:  "• Students code text into binary 
using ASCII and understand the limitations of this and the need for 
Unicode"


I think it unlikely they give much coverage of Unicode at Hove Park 
School but it is a promising start. Personally I am much encouraged, 
as Computer Science education in the UK, at all levels, continues to 
be dominated by ASCII.


…and…

as part of my continuing endeavours to get Computer Science/IT/ICT 
Internationalization on the School/College/University curricula I 
recently setup a google discussion forum 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/computer-science-curriculum-internationalization 
 If 
you know of any academics who might be interested please do let them 
know of this new forum. Unicode is, of course, a fundamental building 
block for internationalization and so should feature prominently in 
Computer Science teaching, at all levels.


André Schappo

Re: Unicode education in UK Schools

[William_J_G Overington via Unicode]

Around 1991 I was shopping in a supermarket and I noticed some product that I 
was buying had its ingredients list in a lot of languages.

I have been interested in typography and languages since the 1960s. During the 
1960s I was given a copy of the Riscatype Accents Catalogue.

A page of particular interest had a list of the accented characters needed to 
typeset various languages of Europe. This was only of languages that used Latin 
script. Esperanto was in the list.

This list fascinated me.

For example, it mentioned the u diaeresis used in French, though I learned 
later that words that have a u diaeresis in French are rather rare.

There were the accents used for various Scandinavian languages. The various 
languages, if I remember correctly, each having a different selection of 
accented characters than the other Scandinavian languages.

I found that the character a tilde as I now know it to be called is only used 
in Portuguese. Some years later, in the early 1970s, two researchers were 
trying to translate a research paper using a Spanish dictionary and having 
great problems. I glanced at the text and said that it was not Spanish, it was 
Portuguese. I was asked if I spoke Portuguese and I replied that I did not and 
mentioned my interest in typography.

As I was saying, around 1991 I was shopping in a supermarket and I noticed some 
product that I was buying had its ingredients list in a lot of languages.

Thinking about this, I devised a scenario that I called The Café Äpfel.

https://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?p=5311#p5311

Around the same time I set up a roomful of PCs so that the start up page of 
each had text at the lower edge showing the sentence Good Day. in about six or 
seven languages.

There was Good Day, Bonjour, and German and Italian versions, Bonan Tagon which 
is Esperanto and one or two others. I sought advice from linguists for some of 
them. Fortunately the Esperanto version did not need any accented characters 
otherwise it would not have been possible to include it at that time.

Here is what I wrote about The Café Äpfel in 2006 in the above-linked 
High-Logic Forum post.

quote

Many years ago I devised a scenario to encourage people to learn how to enter 
words with accented characters in them even if they did not know the language. 
I called it The Café Äpfel and the idea was that text from ingredients lists 
from multilingual food packaging could be keyed. The Café Äpfel would have 
menus in English, French, German and the language of the musicians and singers 
who were performing in the café that evening. I had this idea of a television 
show series with each episode combining cookery, computing and music with 
actors playing the continuing characters and guest musicians and singers 
arriving as guest stars.

Well, a Portuguese band and singer would be fairly straightforward.

Once the musicians come from further afield the computing gets rather more 
complicated! :-)

end quote

So can the idea of The Café Äpfel be updated, extended so as to promote the use 
of Unicode, and applied to help with education?

For example, the original idea included a television series. Now there is 
widespread production of videos.

Previously I wrote:

> Once the musicians come from further afield the computing gets rather more 
> complicated! :-)

What if the musicians are from Latvia?

What if the musicians are from Bulgaria?

What if the musicians are from Japan?

What if the musicians are from  well, how about dividing the class into 
small groups and giving each group a language to investigate.

They could all use emoji as well if you like!

The whole exercise could take them beyond 7-bit to 8-bit, beyond 8-bit to 
16-bit, beyond 16-bit to 21-bit.

Grocery packaging, yes, but today there is the PanLex database too. 
https://www.panlex.org/

So how about as an exercise for the students to typeset the list of ingredients 
of a gluten-free vegetable stew.

There could be a list of several vegetables and the students could use the 
PanLex database and Google translate to look them up and then typeset the menu, 
making use of Unicode code charts to find the code point of each accented 
character and finding out about that character.

For example, the reason why a number of Central European languages each have a 
c caron in them. Some interesting history there.

The first exercises could use languages that only use 8-bit characters, so as 
to get started and some print outs produced.

Maybe French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.

I have tried looking for carrot in the PanLex website.

https://apps.panlex.org/panlinx/

https://apps.panlex.org/panlinx/gp/29

https://apps.panlex.org/panlinx/gp/29/sub/8581

https://apps.panlex.org/panlinx/ex/368537

That was fortunate, the Latvian word for carrot has an a macron in it.

So if The Café Äpfel is having musicians and singers from Latvia to perform, 
and the vegetable stew has carrots in it, the students need to get an a macron