Just because you are a character...
Keywords has an interesting post up about diacritics and other special characters and how they work with unicode. He's looking at it from a discrimination standpoint (ie we're discriminating against those poor Czechs by not putting the diacritics on their names), but it's interesting that in at least some of these cases, the linguistic groups themselves might be making things more difficult. In the case of Tatar, for example, the past few years have seen major decisions about precisely which alphabet to use. Basically they were using a modified Cyrillic alphabet during Soviet times and are in the process of switching to a Latin alphabet. But as I understand it, they ultimately chose to go with some characters that aren't in unicode, even though part of their stated rationale for switching to a Latin alphabet in the first place was to better meet international typography standards.
Thanks for the link! I'm not exactly sure how the body which sets the Unicode standards operates, but I believe that there is a fair amount of room to add both new symbols as well as older ones that haven't yet been added. Certainly Unicode is not a closed system. There are even people trying to get Elvish and Klingon added to Unicode. I once looked up who is on the board that decides these things and it seems to include both government and industry representatives.
Sooner or later, I'm sure, I'll be found out. The word will be out that I went around via Google to the various anti-Bush weblogs, and much like a busy little bee, deposited a comment in those weblogs that allow for such.
At one particular weblog I visited, the blogeuse was at the time in despair. Seemingly, indisputable files documenting Dumb'ya's misgovernance grow thicker and even more nauseating daily. Nonetheless, his lead in the polls increases. Ya'know, that's enough to blow anybody's mind. And so, Mr Goyette, I asked myself a couple questions. What could be going on? What could be the explanation?
Well, here's some of the comment I left. "Nobody cares to admit that their country willfully elevated a nincompoop to head of state. And then, not too long after that, the nincompoop went on to suborn contravening the Geneva Convention.
It's sort'a like admitting tha'cher favorite aunt gets her jollies from 'communing' with alligators. Aaay, c'mon, that's the best way I know how to phrase it ... gimme a break. For all we know, the current chairman of the Federal Communications Commission checks up on your website DAILY."
And here's the permissible portion of the comment I left.
"Recently, Ted Koppel used his allotment of television time to swirl some sobriety into this country's awareness of Iraq. As the photos of American service personnel, who had been killed in Iraq, were being displayed, Mr Koppel recited their names. As best I can, in my own small way, I'm trying to emulate the man. And so, I'd like you to consider reading the text for a "state of the union" address that I believe is imperative for this country of ours. To get to it, all you need do is click on the below enclosed U.R.L
http://www.bcvoice.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=205
By the way, the proprietors of the www.BCVoice.com website have provided a couple ways for you to leave your comments."
I, for one, am quite thankful that my Czech family jettisoned not one, not two or three, but four diacritics from our last name when we came to the U.S.
If not, my last name would have been the utterly unwieldy tongue-twister Řezňíček, the first letter of which only exists in Czech and one obscure African tribal language. (if the diacritics don't display correctly on your computer, you see my point. :) )
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