Re: Term for kana subtext on kanji?

jim_breen_at_hotmail.com
Date: 10/26/04 

Date: 26 Oct 2004 01:01:30 GMT

dareka <dareka@inter7ns.jp> dixit:
>jim_breen@hotmail.com wrote:
>> dareka <dareka@inter7ns.jp> dixit:
>>>.... I think a web page
>>>language are supposed to be the easiest to program when one
>>>writes web page in their own language.
>> That goes for all programming, markup, etc. etc. English tends to
>> rule, and not just English, but the American version. I have to
>> write "center", "color", etc in HTML, although I don't use that
>> spelling elsewhere.
>> Whether language constructs would be better if they could be replaced
>> one-for-one with their equivalents in other languages is a moot point.
>> At least there is a certain universality in having it all in Beiglish.

>What I meant is that if you design and program a web page
>which only has Japanese texts(except for scattered English
>alphabets and symbols) and is written by Japanese and for
>Japanese, the priorities of the web page language should be
>Japanese language conveniences even if they are realized by
>cutting important functions for other languages. If a web page
>language really get popular and used by many....

There is a big danger in saying, "well only people in Swahili-speaking
countries will ever read this page, so I will use a Swahilified
version of HTML that can only be understood by browsers with
special patches or plugins only available in Swahili-speaking
countries." All of a sudden you have created a set of language-
locked no-go zones in what had been a world-wide information
source.

If you think I am joking, see what happened when the JPNIC/JPRS
introduced Japanese domain names as an option in the General Use
set within .jp. To handle the ACE/RACE coding you had to get a
special plugin from Verisign (for IE alone, and only available in
Japan, of course) to let you key and see a domain like $B@iBeED(B.jp.
Great, however without that plugin, no-one else in the world could
see, enter or get that URL to work, unless you did a Bart-like effort on
the underlying codes ($B@iBeED(B coded as "XN--MNQ89HQW2B" at the DNS level.)

I don't want to argue for a language hegemony, but a world-wide
network needs a world-wide language at its working levels. For now
it's Beiglish, and I can live with that.

>>>If this and Unicode
>>>thing have something in common, they both require things you
>>>don't really need and make things complicated if you only use
>>>Japanese.
>>
>> There you lose me. I cannot see why using Unicode is any different from
>> using JIS X 0208-1998 for the overwhelming majority of Japanese
>> computer users. If they put $B$R$,$7(B into their IME and get $BEl(B, do they
>> really care that the underlying code is 0x93 0x8c, or 0xe6 0x9d 0xb1?
>> Do they know?

>I don't want to go over this topic again....

Now, now. If you don't want to debate the point, don't raise it in the
first place. 

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Computer Science & Software Engineering,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia 
$B%8%`!&%V%j!<%s(B@$B%b%J%7%eBg3X(B

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