At 2:04 PM -0500 4/17/01, Ayers, Mike wrote:
> > From: Edward Cherlin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> >
>> I would like to point out, again, that there is not now, and cannot
>> be, an 8-bit code page adequate to English, and the same is
>> necessarily true for every other language in modern use. More than a
>> century of typewriters and computers has inured us to the hardship of
>> less than publication- and calligraphic-quality documents, but has
>> only slightly changed the standards for publication itself.
>>
> > One of the strongest benefits of Unicode is that it supports adequate
>> *monolingual* computing for the first time in any language.
>
> Horsepuckey!
Gesundheit.
> The concept that "publication- and calligraphic-quality documents"
>are the standard for "adequate" computing in English is absurd.
You talk like a heads-down programming geek. Are you?
As I said, the brainwashing over the last century has been intense.
"Adequate" in any form of computing does not mean "What the devotees
are willing to put up with, because there is nothing half so much
worth doing as simply messing around with computers." Nor does it
mean, "the small part of what we want to do that computers can do."
It means "up to the user's task". The task in English includes full
support of publication, which cannot be done in an 8-bit character
set.
Since the introduction of PostScript, the minimum character set for
English has been an 8-bit code page plus Symbol and Dingbats. While
this is still inadequate, it goes far beyond the 255 code points of
DOS, the 88-glyph IBM type ball, and the even more pitiful means
offered by really antique products, such as the uppercase-only
typewriter that Mark Twain used for writing Huckleberry Finn.
>A brief
>glance at handwritten documents or day-to-day works of the last few hundred
>years is enough to confirm this.
I have handwritten documents in English from my college days that
contradict your assertion.
>If you are still skeptical, take a good
>look at the typesetting quality of the average bestselling paperback, and
>note that it has always been possible to use the highest level of the
>printer's art in creating these books (the bestsellers, at least).
>Aesthetic concerns are nice, but the English-reading community has quite
>firmly set them in the "optional" category. For at least one language,
>7 bits was plenty.
This is complete non sequitur, in addition to being incorrect. None
of that cheap printing can be done in ASCII. The only publications I
have seen using straight ASCII are books printed from typed lecture
notes by academic publishers.
Ken Lunde gets mad at me because I encourage people to create less
than publication-quality fonts for non-publication purposes. Ask him
about "adequacy", and you'll get a real earful.
Don Knuth also has a message for you. He designed Metafont
specifically to get calligraphic quality in font design, and his
Computer Modern fonts contain more than 800 characters, along with a
few component glyphs for creating larger character forms.
>
>/|/|ike
--
Edward Cherlin
Generalist
"A knot!" exclaimed Alice. "Oh, do let me help to undo it."
Alice in Wonderland
