[Fwd: Re: Hebrew]

From: Kay Skaist (kskais19@mail.idt.net)
Date: Mon Jul 22 1996 - 16:01:30 EDT


Dear Sir/Madam,
Below is a query letter I wrote Steve Greenfield. I would very much like to know the
answers, but will be leaving this email address at the end of July. The important
thing is that there be answers to the questions, that the topics be considered, and
appropriate action taken. I am returning to Israel Sept. 1, hope to be on email again
soon afterwards, and would like to participate in some way in finding solutions to
facilitate communication in Hebrew on the network. At the moment I do not know whom to
approach or what to do.
Best wishes for a delightful and fruitful summer.
Yours,
Kay Skaist
kskais19@mail.idt.net


attached mail follows:


Kay,
These are GREAT questions! I am going to ask that you send them to
"unicode@unicode.org". A couple will require too much technical
knowledge (more than I can offer).
Steve

>----------
>From: Kay Skaist[SMTP:kskais19@mail.idt.net]
>Sent: Sunday, July 21, 1996 3:26 PM
>To: Steve Greenfield (Unicode)
>Subject: Re: Hebrew
>It's wonderful that you're interested in feedback. I hope you will take the
>following into consideration:
>1. Re. p. 2 of Unicode Technical Introduction. "other Unicode characters were
>moved to new locations in the codeset." If programs use the old places, can
>there be compatibility? I recall the Einstein (Hebrew-English) program had a
>option where one could state that the material used numbers from place 96 or
>128 or 256 or something like that. That allowed for compatability with other
>hardware/programs. Since you have room for user determined signs in certain
>places, could allowances be made for programs that do not as yet use unicode?
>Otherwise, as apparently is true today, Accent can only talk with Accent
>users. The purpose of ASCII was to enable different programs to communicate.
>If Unicode purports to do that today (to enable broad communication), it must
>have the ability to translate to and from programs that place Hebrew in
>another place.
>2. I receive Hebrew on my mailer (Mozilla of Netscape 2), but the
>directionality of punctuation is problematic. Does unicode solve that
>problem?
>3. In Hebrew will there be the possibility of using bold, underline, and
>italics? Italics is usually used for book titles and foreign languages; the
>underline and bold are different degrees of emphasis. To date, it is
>difficult to find italics for Hebrew.
>4. Will unicode have the capability of using italics in footnote fonts? Will
>the ancient Assyrian language (Akkadian) also be a character set in unicode?
>If not, what
>can be done?
>5. What about those who now have or will soon buy Win95. How can they use
>Hebrew? Will programs designed for Win95 work on Windows NT? Is Windows NT
>meant to be the advanced version of Win95? What is so complex about unicode
>that it wasn't used for Win95? Is it too memory hungry? Are there parts of
>unicode (such as languages that most people do not need or seldom need) that
>need not take up much memory until activated?
>6. What is the updated advice for those who have Win95, and only English on a
>computer, and would like to send/receive Hebrew?



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