-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday 23 November 2002 1:26 pm, Klaus-Peter Schrage wrote: > m.w.chang wrote: > > I only knew Latin is an IMPORTANT language in biology and > medicine (and > > I was a Biology student). I believe any further study > into the field of > > western medicine requires a good command of Latin. And be > a real good > > drug makers, you need to learn chinese as well. > > > >>Latin is one language I read fluently and I have no such > memory. There > >>is a Latin dictionary on the Web (actually more than one) > and it fails > > Has anybody ever thought about a latin localisation/distro? > The advandages would be evident: > > - The latin alphabet has only about 22 characters, just > uppercase, no numerals. So there would be no mess with > fonts, encodings etc.
True only for memorials. The mixing of what we now call "lower case" and "upper case" (because old typesetters had them in two different boxes) is fairly modern (late Middle Ages). Modern Latin usage mixes them for ease of reading. > - Input/output devices could be dramatically simplified > (keyboards, Postsript controlled stonecutting devices). > - As I remember from my school days, latin sentences tend to > be very compact. So, together with the 5-bit character code, > no zipping would be necessary when transmitting huge texts > over the Internet. You have never read Tacitus or even much in Cicero or old man Julius, have you. Compact seems not to apply to any of these, except when Julius was being a plitician or Cicero was making a rhetorical point. > Of course, there would be some minor disadvantages: > - Hardly anybody can speak or read latin, perhaps aside from > a few old men in the Vatican and Robert Black Eagle. I know a few who speak it -- I don't. > - Computational algorithms in latin are a bit clumsy and > hard to implement, think of > MCCCXCXXXVIII + LXXXIX = ??? > Klaus > CAPPA RUBRA VIII, NUCLEUS II.IV.XVIII Easily solved. Enter Hindu (excuse me, Arabic) numerals and convert the output. Now -- Sanskrit might be a bit harder. - -- Robert Black Eagle One gets wise only after being stupid. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE938cGtjSYKkYJrmcRAhnsAJ9c5TamHXfshuvKizqr+KXs1oLXsACePPp9 ZLtN9LaZHFZaokfRKBJYzSk= =EkrX -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc -> http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
