Michael Jansson wrote: > Your arguments seems to be that there is only need for one > language on a operating system.
Yes: if you only speak one language, your computer only needs support for that language. And if you speak two, three, four... languages, your computers only needs support for those languages: why having a fifth one? Even if you speak 30 languages, you only need the script(s) used for those languages: if you can't read Cherokee, seeing Cherokee letters is not much more helpful than seeing white squares. The only extra information you get is "That's Cherokee, that's why I can't read it" (provided that you can at least recognize the script). > Why would you need Unicode then? In the case you speak a single language, Unicode is only needed if that language is written in an "Unicode-only" script (such as Ethiopic, Mongolian, Khmer, et al. which don't have legacy encodings). In the case you speak two or more languages, you need Unicode if no other encoding covers that combination of scripts. E.g. if you only speak Chinese and Arabic, you need Unicode, because no other encoding covers this pair of languages. However, the fact that Unicode is not *required* in some cases, does not mean you can't use it also in those cases. About web fonts, I don't think they are a bad idea, per se. However, they should be better used as a fallback for cases when the client computer does not have a suitable font. Why should I download a resource I already have? Moreover, web fonts should be functionally equivalent to local fonts. E.g., they should have all the functionality required by "complex script", and not force authors to use hacky pseudo-encodings. _ Marco
