minow@decvax.UUCP (Martin Minow) (02/06/86)
Roy Smith, in 2178@phri, writes: >I would guess, however, that most European languages would do OK >without an extended character set. I'm not saying it wouldn't be ugly, or >that it wouldn't look funny, or that this would be acceptable for business >letters. I'm just saying that the meaning would be clear. For an ATM, >that's probably good enough. Once upon a time, when computers were new and didn't have any funny letters, a Swedish man refused to pay a bill. He said that the bill wasn't made out to him and that he had the right to his own name. The courts agreed. Computers quickly learned the correct alphabet. There are a number of examples where leaving the "diacritics" off a word drastically changes its meaning. For example, if you leave the ~ off the name of the mayor of Denver, you are calling him a small dog. Martin Minow decvax!minow
lamy@utai.UUCP (Jean-Francois Lamy) (02/08/86)
>>letters. I'm just saying that the meaning would be clear. For an ATM, >>that's probably good enough. I agree that it's perhaps unambiguous, but the use of all caps and of 1970 style displays is not very engaging. While we are on the topic of diacritics, I'd like to know what people in Europe do with electronic mail? I usually leave out the accents when I send e-mail in French, since the cases where ambiguous meanings result are few and far between. A native speaker usually has no problem with this. Not that I have the choice of not omitting them, unfortunately. Terminals with the capability to display French are not widespread, and even then they fail to agree on a common standard... The French researchers I've met seem at home on QWERTY keyboards, which leads me to believe that they don't use the AZERTY layout. Is this true? Does word processing hardware use the AZERTY layout? How many people in Europe actually use computer terminals with the proper layout for their language? -- Jean-Francois Lamy Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Departement d'informatique et de recherche operationnelle, U. de Montreal. CSNet: lamy@toronto.csnet UUCP: {utzoo,ihnp4,decwrl,uw-beaver}!utcsri!utai!lamy EAN: lamy@iro.udem.cdn ARPA: lamy%toronto.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.arpa
hmm@unido.UUCP (02/14/86)
Right now, I'm using an Atari 520 ST to write this response. We have plenty of them at our university as terminals. This neat machine is delivered with a national keyboard only, which is a real hassle for us. We are used to the american layout and character set (Imagine a C program with umlaut-a and umlaut-u as left and right brace). So we have patched the bios of the atari to generate the 'right' keycodes and have put little sticker with the 'right' characters onto the keycaps. Not the real thing, though. They loosen after some time and have to be replaced (especially the often-used ones, like /?). So much about national keyboards... Hans-Martin Mosner <hmm@unido.uucp> University of Dortmund
sommar@enea.UUCP (Erland Sommarskog) (02/15/86)
In article <73400002@unido.UUCP> hmm@unido.UUCP writes: >Right now, I'm using an Atari 520 ST to write this response. >We have plenty of them at our university as terminals. >This neat machine is delivered with a national keyboard only, >which is a real hassle for us. We are used to the american >layout and character set (Imagine a C program with umlaut-a >and umlaut-u as left and right brace). So we have patched the >bios of the atari to generate the 'right' keycodes and have put >little sticker with the 'right' characters onto the keycaps. >Not the real thing, though. They loosen after some time and >have to be replaced (especially the often-used ones, like /?). >So much about national keyboards... > > Hans-Martin Mosner <hmm@unido.uucp> > University of Dortmund NONONONONONONONONONO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The problem is of course not the national keyboard, it's the programming language. Using characters like {} that actually are letters in other languages is nothing but a crime. (Well, C is criminal anyway I think, but that's another story.) And if the bloody stupid langauge must use these symbols, it also have to provide alternatives. E.g. most Pascal- compilers allow you to use (. .) instead of [] and (* *) to replace {}. (And talking about Pascal-compilers and national lanuages, I remember the first one I worked with. It was for Univac 1100 and was developed at the University if Copenhagen in Denmark. If started your program with the directive (*$DANSK*), the compiler accepted ][\ (which are letters in Scandinavian ASCII:s) as letter in identifiers. Of course their normal use were disabled then. (DANSK if you wonder means "Danish" in Danish. I loved that very much.)
bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) (02/17/86)
>The problem is of course not the national keyboard, it's the programming >language. Using characters like {} that actually are letters in other >languages is nothing but a crime. (Well, C is criminal anyway I think, >but that's another story.) And if the bloody stupid langauge must use >these symbols, it also have to provide alternatives. E.g. most Pascal- >compilers allow you to use (. .) instead of [] and (* *) to replace {}. I think this is the tail wagging the dog, and a mighty big tail wagging a very small dog. Re-write the compilers and programming language texts etc to fit the keyboards? Seems strange to me, seems like keyboards ought to have curly braces if they have come into such common use and the umlauts should be moved elsewhere (ie. both should be able to co-exist, I don't understand, what's the big deal?) In fact, our C compiler in our IBM environment was modified to accept what you suggest (same as Pascal) because of the EBCDIC environment, trust me, it causes lotsa confusion, it's unbelievable how annoying it is for students (and worse, experienced programmers) to not be able to figure out how to type a piece of code in because of brain-damaged keyboards, it's a nightmare at user-services with person after person lining up to ask the same question for about 3 years now. And once it gets typed in, try porting it, translating that is such a stupid waste of time. Of course, there is the compromise in C, as is stated in one of the C references: #define BEGIN { #define END } put that in some standard header file with the right codes and you can probably ignore the problem for your own purposes for a while, and everyone can have their own (things like FI and OD and ELIHW work also.) I suspect attitudes like the above will leave standards attempts destroyed as people just sneer and say 'they gotta be kidding!', many, many standards have died because they just were rejected by the people to whom they were supposed to be useful. I think the original poster this was addressed to makes his point well, he just undid his 'national' keyboard at the first opportunity. -Barry Shein, Boston University
sommar@enea.UUCP (Erland Sommarskog) (02/18/86)
In article <172@bu-cs.UUCP> bzs@bu-cs.UUCP writes: > >>The problem is of course not the national keyboard, it's the programming >>language. Using characters like {} that actually are letters in other >>languages is nothing but a crime. (Well, C is criminal anyway I think, >>but that's another story.) And if the bloody stupid langauge must use >>these symbols, it also have to provide alternatives. E.g. most Pascal- >>compilers allow you to use (. .) instead of [] and (* *) to replace {}. > >I think this is the tail wagging the dog, and a mighty big tail wagging >a very small dog. Re-write the compilers and programming language texts >etc to fit the keyboards? Seems strange to me, seems like keyboards ought >to have curly braces if they have come into such common use and the >umlauts should be moved elsewhere (ie. both should be able to co-exist, >I don't understand, what's the big deal?) > I don't think the "umlauts" should be moved elsewhere, at least not in ASCII. Move the braces and brackets somewhere else. It just so happens that the ASCII I am used to represents my alphabet. (Almost: W isn't really part of it and oA is placed two steps wrong.) What would you think of a collating sequence like: A B C $ / # D E F ) = # and so forth. I think one of basic ideas behind this conference is to make it possible not only for English-speaking people to not to have write special sort programs, but be able rely on standard program (like grep) or standard functions in programming languages. (like < >, etc for string comparisons in Pascal.) This of course also includes how things are represented on the screen and the keyboard. So you're right, compilers will need to be rewritten. Not only to fit the different keyboards, but also the HUMAN BEEINGS behind them. And of course it's a very big tail wagging a small dog. The tail is the vast majority of the people in the world who don't have English as their native language and the dog is those who do. Erland Sommarskog ENEA Data Stockholm Sweden
leif@erisun.UUCP (Leif Samuelsson) (02/19/86)
In article <172@bu-cs.UUCP> bzs@bu-cs.UUCP writes: > I think this is the tail wagging the dog, and a mighty big tail wagging > a very small dog. Re-write the compilers and programming language texts > etc to fit the keyboards? Seems strange to me, seems like keyboards ought > to have curly braces if they have come into such common use and the > umlauts should be moved elsewhere (ie. both should be able to co-exist, > I don't understand, what's the big deal?) Re-write the ISO standard and fix all keyboards to fit the C compiler? You've got to be kidding. The big deal is really that ASCII is a national superset of the ISO character and other countries have other versions of it. Curly braces do not *exist* in the ISO standard. I really don't expect anyone to rewrite the C language, it's too far gone for that. But it would be great if somebody could come up with a suggestion for a shell syntax based on the ISO subset. It shouldn't be too hard. (Like, how about using ':' for pipe? It's much more mnemonic than lowercase o with dieresis). > ... it's unbelievable how annoying it is for students > (and worse, experienced programmers) to not be able to figure out how to > type a piece of code in because of brain-damaged keyboards If you think that our keyboards are brain-damaged, then I think you have misunderstood the whole issue. Let me also repeat that I am not asking for support in Unix for the Swedish character set. I'm only asking people to keep their hands off the braces and brackets when writing new software meant for the international market. (For instance, I wish that Larry Wall would use (y,n,q) in prompts instead of [ynq]. The latter is totally unreadable on our screens). Many people comment that we need a new character standard. Fine, but until then, let's try to use what we have. Leif Samuelsson ..enea!erix!erisun!leif Ericsson Information Systems AB, Advanced Workstations Department S-172 93 SUNDBYBERG, Sweden (59 19' N / 17 57' E) ---------------------- ! ! ! | ! ! ! ! This is not a pipe ! (It's not a vertical bar at all!) ----------------------