Text 20212, 121 rader
Skriven 2011-06-28 13:19:03 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Foreign misconceptions of the USA
=========================================
Hello Robert,

On Monday June 27 2011 08:27, you wrote to me:

 MV>> I think one of the problems is that for German there is an
 MV>> "official" transliteration scheme for those unable to write
 MV>> non-ASCII characters. An umauted vowel can be written by appending
 MV>> an 'e' to it. So ö becomes oe. ü becomes ue, etc.

 RB> Actually, it's not "official" in the sense that there's some kind of
 RB> law.

Hence the quotes...  It is "official" in the sense that it is widely accepted
and that there is consensus about how it works.

 RB>  It's an historical thing. The umlauts were originally simple
 RB> letters with a small, lower-case "e" written in the old German script

Thanks for the refresher. Most of it, I already knew, but some of the details
were new to me.

 RB> names like "Szumendera", who was the manager of a bank where I once
 RB> did business). So the esszet is only a way of writing "ss", and in
 RB> fact, the latest revision of German has all but eliminated its use in
 RB> favor of "ss".

I would not be surprised if that would raise some protests from people of my
generation...

 MV>> Bob seems to think this is universal.

 RB> No, of course not.

You certainly seemed to at some time. Given your insistence that Björn should
use "the transliteration".

 RB> But since the "o" in Bjorn's name looks like an umlaut

Things are not always what they look...

 RB> and in fact is printed the same here on screen,

As i explained in a previous message, the same glyph - the two dots above - is
used for more than one thing. In German it is used for the um;aut. In Dutch and
other languages, it is a trema. In Scandinavian languages it apparently is
neither, the characters with dieresis are totally different characters than
their non dotted counterparts. There is no transliteration.

 RB> I originally just typed the umlaut (which was automatically
 RB> transliterated by my system,

Argghh! That is setting the clock back! Your system is configured to easely
type the ö character and then you deliberately cripple it by having it
translated into 'oe'. And nit just in the German areas, but in all others as
well. Just on the assumption that the German transliteration schem is
universal.

 RB> since I don't use non-ASCII characters on principle to avoid putting
 RB> garbage on readers that can't or don't handle such characters  - of
 RB> which there are still many around).

Backward compatibility has it merits, but there always comes a point that it
stands in the way of progress and then it is time to let go. I am sure you
remember the time when computers were upper case only. That was fine when they
were only used in a business environment, but now that ended some thirty yeras
ago when people started using computers for typewriters.  Today no one finds
UPPER CASE ONLY acceptable.

That turning point has been reached for ASCII ONLY some fifteen years ago. Even
in FidoNet. Well, naybe 10 for FidoNet.

The odd thing is that unlike the InterNet FidoNet was build as an 8 bit
transparent medium from the start, There never was a compelling technical
reason to limit text to 7 bits only. And yet somehow everyone not living in
Northern America was kept on a short leash and forced to go through hoops to
make do with a 26 six letter aplhabet only.

This has lasted to long. Highh time to drop backwards compatibility. It stands
in the way of progress. Time to shift the burden from the vast majority of
non-English spekers to the few that are too lazy or incompetent to confgure
their systems to deal with extended character sets. If the result is that a few
get magled characters on their screens, so be it. Better than forcing
*everyone* into a state of cripplement by restricting them to 26 letters.

 RB> Bjorn doesn't like that,

For good reasons.

 RB> so now I just type an "o".

Thereby crippling his name. Typing "Bjorn" or Bjoern" is on the same level as
writing "Pop" or "Beb" instead of "Bob".

 RB>  I can't type cyrillic characters either,

But you *can* type an ö. The reason you don't is not technical limitation, but
stubbornness.

 RB> and would write a Russian's name in Latin characters. No sane Russian
 RB> would object to that in an English text.

I wonder. There is a reason for the "TRUENAME" kludge the Russians invented.
And you may ask why there are so few iof them here. The vast majority of
FidoNet participants use the Cyrillic alphabet, but very few write here. Maybe
one of the reasons is that they are forbidden to properly wite their name?

 MV>> I suspect that in Swedish simply replacing 'ö' by 'oe' does not
 MV>> work either.

 RB> Apparently not, but Bjorn makes himself look pretty silly with his
 RB> insistance on using the character,

I beg to differ. Going through some effort to correctly spell people's name is
a matter of courtesy. And in this case, it requires very little effort, all you
have to do is remove that automatic transliteration.


Cheers, Michiel

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