Re: MES as an ISO standard?

From: Joan Aliprand (BR.JMA@rlg.org)
Date: Wed Jul 02 1997 - 18:28:37 EDT


Markus G. Kuhn wrote on Wed, 2 Jul 1997 in response to John Jenkin's
question about Level 1 of UCS-2:

>In addition, the sheer size (~40000 versus ~1000, factor 40) characters of
>Level 1 is just mind boggling for any non-Asian developer who is not an
>i18n expert and who is not specifically developing applications for the
>Asian market.
>
>The statement of Adrian Havill that Unicode is already widely accepted
>in the mind of developers is in my very practical experience SIMPLY NOT
>WRONG.

[Various examples of rejection of Unicode cited.]

I am just back from the American Library Association Conference.
* All the major systems companies are either at work on Unicode-based
  systems or are committed to use Unicode.
* Libraries are writing Unicode support into their bid requirements.

ALA has a planning group working on incorporation of Unicode into the
USMARC formats for the exchange of library data.

The danger in the library world is that developers and librarians may
expect too much from Unicode. Or, to paraphrase (and invert) what Geoffrey
Waigh wrote:
>The problem .. is that people don't seem to be reading the Unicode
>standard before *embracing* it.

-- Joan Aliprand
   Research Libraries Group

To: UNICODE@UNICODE.ORG



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