urban@spp3.UUCP (Mike Urban) (01/28/86)
In a discussion with some friends about the language Esperanto, we observed that one difficulty that the language appears to present is that it contains accented letters (in the case of Esperanto, circumflexed consonants, which do not appear in the ISO proposed LATIN-1 character set). This is mostly a problem on typewriters (which don't have a circumflex key), but it's a problem with computers too, since the circumflex can't be used as an overstrike character on most CRT screens, and accented letters are separate letters which don't have their own key. We quickly realized that this is a problem in typography that goes beyond Esperanto. My question is twofold: First: in countries that have accented letters (France, for example), how do typewriters work? Do they have a circumflex key (e.g., for c^ote) that doesn't move the carriage (or typeball) or ...? The same question for computer keyboards. Second: how do American-type computers (or their owners?) approach the problem of typing foreign characters, as for foreign-language electronic mail or foreign-language teaching programs? Is there a "standard" typographic convention for ANSI keyboards when typing foreign characters? What is it? While Esperanto is one language not addressed by LATIN-1, this particular problem of typography goes beyond Esperanto; it is not solved by an extended character set unless you issue LATIN-1 keyboards (with a gazillion keys for all the accented vowels, etc.) to all computer owners. In other words, even if there's a standard binary code for Scandinavian slashed-o, I still don't know how to type it on my present keyboard. Thanks in advance, Mike
minow@decvax.UUCP (Martin Minow) (01/30/86)
Foreign-language typewriters use different approaches, depending on the specific language. My Swedish typewriter has separate keys for <A">, <O">, <A-ring>, and (maybe) <U-umlaut>. It also has a "dead-key" for acute- and grave- accent. Esperanto isn't widely used, and probably had no representatives on the ISO/CBEMA committee. There are procedures in place for additional character sets, so an Esperanto standard committee could create a registered character set. Dec's current terminals (VT200 family) have the capability of generating and displaying both National Character Sets and the Dec-Multinational set that is very similar to Latin-1. The keyboard can generate all of the national letters, even if they don't appear on the keys. This means that I can write Swedish on my USA keyboard, and write C programs on a Swedish National keyboard (that lacks braces and brackets). For the record, the above are my opinions and not an official statement of Digital Equipment Corporation. Martin Minow decvax!minow
breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel) (01/30/86)
> In a discussion with some friends about the language Esperanto, > we observed that one difficulty that the language appears to > present is that it contains accented letters (in the case of > Esperanto, circumflexed consonants, which do not appear in the > ISO proposed LATIN-1 character set). This is mostly a problem I was under the impression that the circumflex in Esperanto can be ommitted in the case of the 'u', and can be substituted for by following a consonant with the letter 'h'. Thomas.