On 6/4/97 at 6:42 PM -0500, David Goldsmith wrote:
>Chris Newman (Chris.Newman@innosoft.com) wrote:
>
>>What about a multi-valued attribute where each value may be in multiple
>>languages?
>
>Since Unicode can support multiple languages, can you give an example
>where language tagging is necessary *and* there is only plain text
>present?
And if the two languages being used are Chinese and Japanese?
>>What about any multilingual descriptive string which a blind user might
>>need to hear?
>
>This is true, but seems like a rare case (the multilingual aspect).
Rare is not an acceptable retort; if it can happen, it will happen, and the
protocol must deal with it.
>Wouldn't sending a phonetic alternate form (suitable for driving a speech
>synthesizer) work even better?
Well, yes it would work better for the speech synthesizer, but would be
exceedingly poor for the text display engine. :-)
>>What about the example Pete Resnick of Qualcomm recently stated for
>>multilingual descriptive text in a personal addressbook on a Macintosh?
>
>It seems like descriptive text would be a good application for rich text,
>but if that's not acceptable I guess I don't see why plain Unicode isn't
>good enough for this.
Again, what happens if the two languages being used are Chinese and Japanese?
>I can certainly see that language tagging helps solve some of the
>problems you list, but I don't see why those problems can't be solved by
>"higher-level protocols".
Some sort of protocol is needed to distinguish at least CJK for rendering
of text (whether on the screen or in speech or whatever). Tagging at the
higher-level would work as well, but it adds complexity to the protocol,
especially for the client. Personally, I don't think that the complexity is
that large a burden, but some people do.
pr
-- Pete Resnick <mailto:presnick@qualcomm.com> QUALCOMM Incorporated Work: (217)337-6377 / Fax: (217)337-1980
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