Re: [xml-dev] Re: It's too late to improve XML ... lessons learned?

Of course, at that point in history Unicode was very controversial in Japan, mostly due to the "Han Unification" issue, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification

Murata-san made the right choice, we should thank him for that.

Speaking of Japanese technology, some people might appreciate this historical curiosity, the slide show from 2006 where I introduced Unicode to the Ruby community: http://www.tbray.org/talks/rubyconf2006.pdf

It's hard to believe now, but Unicode was once a very hard technology to sell.

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 7:27 AM MURATA <eb2mmrt@gmail.com> wrote:

I seriously thought about objecting
the use of Unicode as the document
character set. I even started to write
an email, but I didn’t send it.

I was also instructed to object the use
of non-ascii characters in tag names
in Japan. I once oked, but I didn't.

Regards,
Makoto

2022年1月13日(木) 23:08 Henry S. Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>:
Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com> writes:

> A huge benefit, brought by XML, was that with Unicode, it allowed
> [all natural languages] an equal playing field

Hear, hear. Those of you who were around in [Santa Clara, I think it
was?] when the box of red pre-prints of the 1st draft of XML was
distributed will remember that there was significant push-back on the
commitment to Unicode, along the lines of "you idiots, you've signed
your own death warrent, no-one will commit to doubling the size of
their documents just to accommodate people who should be using English
anyway". I exaggerate only slightly. All credit to Jon Bosak and the
rest of the editorial group for not giving in.

ht
--
Henry S. Thompson, Markup Systems Ltd.
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Fax: (44) 131 651-1426, e-mail: ht@markup.co.uk
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慶應義塾大学政策・メディア研究科特任教授
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