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From: mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: more diacritical marks...
Message-ID: <1000@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 18-Aug-85 01:06:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.1000
Posted: Sun Aug 18 01:06:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 20:22:45 EDT
References: <487@talcott.UUCP>, <998@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: U Chicago -- Linguistics Dept
Lines: 37

My my, what's the problem here.  Some of our Scandinavian friends expressed
the modest wish (probably the forlorn hope) that display devices and
character sets could handle their national alphabets a little better
(including order).  Thomas Breuel replied, essentially, that these folks are
asking for too much, they ought to be able to get by with the standard
26 used in English, no diacritics or additional characters.  Charles Blair
here at U.Chicago has a followup in defense of Breuel (not that we've seen
any complaints against him come through here yet), on grounds that don't
seem to me very relevant.  The comparison with the Japanese romanisation
question has some general or distant relevance, but it doesn't bear at
all directly on this particular question.  Nor do Blair's phonological
comments.  It's true, of course, that the alphabet we use doesn't provide
a one-one mapping for the sounds of English.  Ja...und??  The wish expressed
by the Scandinavians was not for a writing system that would allow for
phonemic spelling of their languages, it was rather just that they would
like to be able to use on their computers the written alphabets they
already have.
	C'mon, fellas.  Don't you think it's a little heavy handed to argue
that our alphabet should prevail because much computer development took
place in an English-speaking (rahter, -writing) context?  Try the shoe on the
other foot.  What if the standards had come from a country that doesn't use
`W'?  Now the Americans come along and say Isn't there some way you guys
could please fit in `W', just for us to use here?  And the answer comes:
well you don't really need it, just use 'U'.  Or else: okay, we'll put
it in for you in place of some punctuation, at the end of the collation
sequence (or somewhere in the 8-bit set).  Meanwhile all our phone books
and dictionaries still have it between `V' and `X', so either we have to
accept that computer-generated lists will have W-words in the wrong place
or we have to include a wasteful kludge in every sorting routine to put
the W-words back in the right place.
	In any case, even if you're not convinced of their need for some
adjustment, what's your objection?  Nobody wants to take away our ASCII
for domestic consumption.
-- 

            -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago 
               ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar