Re: XML Blueberry (non-ASCII name characters in Japan)

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

At 4:39 PM -0400 7/9/01, John Cowan wrote:
>Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
>
>> At 2:52 PM -0400 7/9/01, John Cowan wrote:
>>
>>> Please tell me what kind of argument you would find convincing.
>>
>> Prove to me the existence of 10,000 or more users who want to write
>> XML *markup* in any combination of the scripts added in Unicode 3.0
>> and 3.1, who cannot reasonably use an alternative script for their
>> language of choice, and who do not read and write some better
>> supported language.
>
>I doubt if you (or anyone) could *prove* the existence of 10,000
>users who want to write XML markup in English, never mind in the
>newly added languages.
>

Actually I can. I can personally attest to the sale of several times ten thousand copies of books on the subject of writing XML markup in English. If it were really important I could produce royalty statements to document this. With time I could probably prove it in Polish, Korean, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese, and a few others besides. 

>So your argument reduces to: Latin was there first, so it wins.
>Ethiopic/Khmer/Thaana/Myanar script languages didn't make it under
>the gate in time, so they lose.  For at least the next few thousand
>years.

Not at all. My argument is that there is not yet one shred of evidence that anyone actually wants to use, much less needs, the changes you're proposing. If such evidence is really all that hard to find, then how big can the benefit possibly be?  If you expect me to believe that the benefits outweigh the costs, then you've got to show me some benefits. 
-- 

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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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