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

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

At 5:31 PM -0400 7/9/01, John Cowan wrote:


>I think that talk of *need* is misconceived; as I said, there is
>no *need* to have Greek, much less Thaana, markup.  People *want*
>to use their own language, that's all.  Why should the "newer"
>script users be exempt from this desire?
>

Because satisfying this want is going to cost a lot of other users money and time. That's not necessarily an insurmountable objection, but you've got to show that the benefits outweigh the costs. You can argue about the relative weight that should be assigned to different benefits and costs. You can say that the richer users should absorb the costs for the benefit of the poorer users. (Though IBM for one doesn't seem to believe that since they're very rich, and they still want everybody else to absorb the costs of NEL for them.) 

But before you can make any of these arguments, you've got to show some benefit to what you're proposing, and so far you haven't done that! You've yet to produce a single person from the affected Ethiopic, Burmese, Khmer, etc. communities saying they either want or need this. 
-- 

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