Esperanto has been mentioned in this thread. As many readers will know, the twelve accented characters for Esperanto, six uppercase and six lowercase, are included in Unicode.
This has recently had a very interesting result. As many people know, Unicode is used in Java and Java is used in the DVB-MHP (Digital Video Broadcasting - Multimedia Home Platform) system, details of which are available, including the specification, at the http://www.mhp.org website. Now, the DVB-MHP specification lists those Unicode characters which must as a minimum be included in all DVB-MHP televisions and DVB-MHP set top boxes. As it happens a quite large sequence of characters is specified for a minimum system, and the Esperanto characters are included in it. Thus Esperanto based multimedia could easily be broadcast on a DVB-MHP system anywhere in the world, without needing to wonder about whether the necessary fount will be available. It will be interesting to observe whether this facility will become used by broadcasters and content providers. Maybe Esperanto poetry accompanying pictures of forests and so on will be broadcast. Readers might like to have a look at an animated .gif file that I prepared back in 1998. It is used in the following web page. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/de000000.htm The third frame of the animation might be particularly interesting. Fun puzzle: How many languages include at least one of those characters, and which languages are they? Fun puzzle: How many languages include two or more of those characters, and which languages are they? I don't have total answers to those fun puzzles, so information would be welcome. Serendipity leading where it leads, readers might like to have a look at the following. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/ast02400.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/ast02900.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/ast02902.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/ast00000.htm The main index of the webspace is as follows. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo The main index provides access to various items, including the Border Carnation screensaver and the Border Carnation desktop graphic. On the matter of Esperanto, a story that I wrote in 1998 includes a method of encoding Esperanto using 7 bit printing ASCII characters, which method I had devised several years earlier, which some readers might find interesting for its historical interest. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/euto0008.htm William Overington 16 March 2002
