participating communities (was XML Blueberry)

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 10 Jul 2001 10:01:17 -0400, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> At 7:21 PM -0400 7/9/01, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> 
> 
> >I'm afraid I lack contacts in Phnom Penh, but let's say a young
> >developer is given the job of creating a markup language for archiving
> >documents.  The text is Khmer, but if we listen to the objections of
> >those who find additional Name characters distasteful, this developer
> >has to make a choice.
> >
> 
> Let's stop imagining what the situation is and try to find out what it really is by actually talking to some of the people there. 

That sounds wonderful, but as I noted at the beginning of the paragraph
you cited, I lack contacts.  I can't say I find the New York Times
perspective on Asia especially appropriate to situations involving work
within a country rather than work between countries.

This is a thoroughly anglophone-dominated list, and I'll be highly
impressed should someone from Phnom Penh appear to deliver an
explanation of what the situation on the ground really is.  Even if they
weren't to care today, I would not find that sufficient reason to
barricade these characters from XML.

We've seen Murata Makoto explain some circumstances in Japanese which
make modification of XML 1.0 seem like a very good idea for a large
number of people. [1]  I honestly can't understand why you seem to
insist that the costs are too high unless we can magically produce
additional people working in markup from places which are rather
unlikely at this point to have ready access to xml-dev or a current high
priority on markup.

> If you want to develop technologies that are appropriate for a 
> community, then you have to have people from that community involved 
> in the process. A group of Fortune 500 employees from G7 nations 
> cannot reasonably expect to say what is and isn't good for Ethiopia, 
> Myanmar, or anywhere else without at least talking to and ideally 
> involving the people their decisions affect.

No, but a group of people from G7 countries can go out of their way to
avoid building systems which would exclude the people their decisions
affect.  That can work, especially in cases like this one where the
costs would be borne by the G7 folks rather that inflicted on the users
of scripts that came late to the Unicode table.

[1] - http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200107/msg00254.html