[thelist] [TIP] - Use UTF-8 whenever possible, or get used to extra doses of caffeine.

Fri May 12 07:55:30 CDT 2006

>ISTM the standardisation for URIs ought to be UTF. I think itreasonable to 
>assume that English-only speakers will have no interestin >visiting URIs 
>they cannot even type such as özçelik.com, and ifthey are interested they 
>will know how to use an alternate keyboard.

Well i cannot agree on that one altough i have great respect for arguments 
you provide in your reaction!!

Using "another" keyboard setting is far from "easy"  and comfortable. I 
switched once in a while between English - Latin and Cyrillic.
Well some applications would start a live on their own back then and switch 
as they would like even when i definitely set the language to be this or 
that. Ever tried to type Cyrillic on a Qwerty board..... Many people do not 
even know how to type special characters that are not printed on a keyword 
key....

On the other hand totally agree: somehow it cannot be right all is limited 
to English latin only domains....
but then i think some solution must be found to make it as accessable for 
all as possible.  Having domainnames in diff. character set will feed the 
organisations and governments who want to have a closed internet for their 
territory or language group only....

Think if this threads will go on some one get's enough handles to write an 
award winning book on this subject :)
Internet and the internationalisation paradox.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "T. R. Valentine" <trvalentine at gmail.com>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Friday, May 12, 2006 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [thelist] [TIP] - Use UTF-8 whenever possible,or get used to 
extra doses of caffeine.

> On 11/05/06, Chris at globet.com <Chris at globet.com> wrote:
>> > Why should not people who have keyboards that enter> > characters with 
>> > which they are quite comfortable from a> > language with which they are 
>> > comfortable be able to enter> > those characters to access a URI? What 
>> > is wrong with these> > potential domains?> >    www.özçelik.com> > 
>> > www.περιχώρησις.com> >    www.православная.com>> "Wrong" is abstract in 
>> > this context. What is impractical about> these potential domains is 
>> > that it will be more difficult for> migrants to access services and 
>> > information when located in> English speaking countries; of which there 
>> > are many. There is a> difference in practicality between providing 
>> > correctly encoded (but> non standard for the environment) output, and 
>> > *requiring* correctly> encoded (but non standard for the environment) 
>> > input.
> ISTM that migrants located in English speaking countries who arecomputer 
> literate will either have a computer configured to run in thenative 
> language or at least the ability to switch keyboards. Also,since migrants 
> located in English speaking countries will always be aminority, it seems 
> unreasonably restrictive to compel the users of alanguage to limit their 
> URIs to the characters found in the Englishalphabet.
>
>> > Must the Internet be American-centred?>> No, why? Using a certain 
>> > character set has nothing to do with> geographical boudaries. If you 
>> > want to reach the broadest cross-> section of the global population, 
>> > then standardisation; not> diversification; should be the goal.
> ISTM the standardisation for URIs ought to be UTF. I think itreasonable to 
> assume that English-only speakers will have no interestin visiting URIs 
> they cannot even type such as özçelik.com, and ifthey are interested they 
> will know how to use an alternate keyboard.
>
>> See this article for a nice primer on encoding:>> 
>> <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html>
> Thanks. It is a good primer.
>
>
>
> On 11/05/06, Luther, Ron <Ron.Luther at hp.com> wrote:
>> My question dealt with the latter - the non-Roman characters.>> Let me 
>> provide a little more background.  I work in IntraNet reporting> for a> 
>> largish global company headquartered in the US.  (If the company were> 
>> headquartered in a country where everyone was familiar with multi-byte> 
>> character sets I agree that I would not expect as much of a problem.> It 
>> is not.)>> Our new (and quite enormous by any measure) data warehouse 
>> will be> UTF-8.
> I thought UTF-8 was *not* a 'multi-byte character set' in the lowerranges 
> (which equate with ASCII).
>
>> [Yes, I have been through all of the arguments on 'centralized 
>> corporate>> reporting needs' versus 'local country reporting needs'. I 
>> believe I> understand them.  In this context I am *only* talking about 
>> the> centralized corporate reporting.]>> How do I train users not 
>> accustomed to working with diacritical marks on> their use?
> Okay, I understand that would be a problem. Of course, training usersis 
> *always* a problem! ;-)
>
>> How do I get users to understand that searching for a 'keyword' that> 
>> returned> all records of interest in the past will no longer do so 
>> because some> data records> will have that keyword spelled with different 
>> characters they may not be> familiar with?>> What advice can I give to 
>> users who currently extract the ASCII-7 data> and> throw it into MS 
>> Access for post-processing on the issues they will run> into> when that 
>> data is suddenly UTF-8?>>> Those are some of the concerns I have 
>> in-house.>> For worldwide ExtraNet or InterNet applications, (yes - they 
>> are> different things),> I have fewer concerns about UTF-8 and would, 
>> most likely, advocate it's> use.
> Okay. Thanks.
>
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