one more data point from a person who lived, travelled and used computers in a few countries (Romania, France, Germany, Belgium, UK, Canada, US, Holland, Italy). paraphrasing:
rule 1: if it's not on my keyboard, it doesn't exist; rune 2: if it's not on everybody's keyboard, it doesn't exist. long, windy argument: 1. enter an internet cafe in Amsterdam, read your account in the web browser. you get a window, it's hard to guess which OS is underneath. all you get is a browser window, full screen. you are on the perl6-language mailing list. before even contributing to the list you need to configure your keyboard, and you have to figure out how. and you have to trust the OS and browser installation to correctly transfer the funnies; 2. different keyboards have different symbols on them. did you know that the UK keyboard is different from the US one? Belgium has two national keyboards (Vallon and Flemish), the Vallon one is different from the one used in France (and from the one used in Quebec), the Flemish one different from the one used in Holland, and so on; 3. backquote is not on all keyboards, similarly the curlies. some have a funny quote (oblique), which doesn't transfer/translate well, and which, visually, seems fine until you run it through the interpreter; 4. "> everybody is doing it! first one is free!" actually, it is like the other favourite pastime: "everybody is doing it, but the first time hurts the most" (of the people ;-) setting it up is difficult, afterwards yes, it may come up fine for more symbols; 5. if you want to wait for the computing platforms before programming in p6, then there is quite a wait ahead. how about platforms which will never catch up? VMS, anyone? 6. "> they'll catch up with p6 and employ Unicode, or they'll die" or the other way 'round; 7. I type this on a Solaris box, telnet'd into a Linux box, I run pine (please _do_not_ ask people to change application so that they become worthy of reading your messages!). accented letters don't go through; 8. << and >> are not exactly common in non-Latin scripts. one more alien symbol to learn for those who started their lives in scripts like Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, etc.; 9. "> now you have the set-up of a six-year old Swiss" can the six-year old explain how he did it? 10. fearless leaders listen to their constituency and act accordingly, this is the only way they can remain fearless. still reading? flaviu
