If we're going to do reductio ad absurdum, we may as well go all the way <g>...
If you are using an Arabic keyboard, do you not get the "catalog numbers" associated with that writing system (instead of "normal" 0-9)?
I agree that 0-9 are known globally. Heck, the vast majority of computer users know and recognize ASCII. The point, again, was: why are we arguing about localizing all of these characters to support the most technical users and thus confusing the issue with multiple standards (one for every locale on Earth? The answer I'm hearing is that we've OVER estimated the user community, since many users will probably learn their favorite characters that are not keyboard accessible and this is the audience we need to address.
Personally, I'd prefer hex to always be represented by 0-9, A-F from the ASCII range.
AP
-----Original Message-----
From: Markus Kuhn [mailto:Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 1999 2:51 AM
To: Unicode List
Subject: Re: Hexadecimal character entry (ISO 14755)
"Addison Phillips" wrote on 1999-06-08 00:52 UTC:
> That was my point, actually. Everyone was focused on localizing
> the "first six letters", assuming that 0-9 are universal.
The ASCII digits 0-9 *are* globally known, thanks to a product of Earth
civilization commonly referred to as the "telephone". Any claim that the
digits 0-9 would need localization because they are now known or not
available in some part of the earth is a clear sign of pathologic o22n
(overinternationalisation). The i18n community is occasionally a bit
susceptible to seeing problems where there are none in the real world. A
couple of cultural conventions can be happily accepted today as globally
valid, and the digits 0-9 are certainly among them.
Markus
--
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
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