Message no. 1

From:	Dan Grabon djmoose@******.kornet.net
Subject:	Tír na nÓg spelling
Date:	Thu, 30 Mar 2000 13:20:35 +0900

On 3/30/00 2:27 AM, Logan Graves at logan1@********.net wrote:

> Oh, & apologies to the Mac folks, who are probably thoroughly annoyed be
> now...

Not even slightly... the accents came through just fine, both in the message
and the title. Then again, I'm using MS Outlook Express.

As for character sets, I have yet to figure out if Unicode is really as
universal as the name implies. But it's worth noting that *current*
character sets like Korean, Chinese, and Japanese include Roman characters
as well and generally have no problem displaying the basics, even if written
in a different character set. The only trouble is when you start getting
into extended ASCII, accents, circumflexes, etc., because they're either
mapped differently or not present.

However, I don't think this would be a big issue in 2060; by that point I
think they'd have all the kinks worked out on all platforms. There would
still be different character sets, but I imagine they'd fit together even
better than they do today (which is not bad) and would probably be standard
on most computers.

To give you an idea, Apple used to sell several different language sets for
the Mac. They were expensive, a little complicated to use, and had to be
purchased individually on a stack of disks or a CD. Now, though, most or
all of those kits are integrated into the latest OS release. For several
tens of megabytes your computer can display and compose in Korean, Japanese,
Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. It seems to me that several decades of growth
and computerization in non-Western countries will make things simple and
compatible on all platforms.

-moose

---
Dan "Moose" Grabon - djmoose@******.kornet.net
The shortest distance between two points is undoubtedly a curvy, winding
path, so enjoy the scenery.
-- Synchronicity