Re: dotless j

From: Peter_Constable@sil.org
Date: Wed Jul 07 1999 - 23:00:00 EDT


Marion,

In a message a couple of days ago, you said that SIL is "invasive" and has
"prevailed". I'm not sure what you meant in either case; I can only guess based
on the quotations in your postscript. (Note that the quotation "advice to
natives... " came from another source, not from me.) I gather you think SIL
wants to inhibit people from using whatever characters they choose to write
their languages and to be able to use them on computers. Is that what you were
meaning?

I should point out that the comments you quoted are my own opinions, for what
they're worth, and not the official policy of SIL. You also said that SIL has an
"unchanging attitude". I must assume you mean me. In the discussion of dotless
j, I'm willing to change my opinion if I see evidence for a permanent
allocation. I never assumed, though, that my opinions would have too much
bearing on the matter. Besides, this isn't a real proposal until a proposal is
written, and your friend Michael, who first suggested adding a dotless j, sure
knows a lot more about writing proposals than I do. :-) Since he hasn't added
this to a proposal, then I figure this is all really just mental gymnastics that
allows neophites like me to wrap my brain around what this standard is and what
the principles are on which its design is based. I'm sorry if, while I'm still
clumsy at these new exercises, I bump into others. I'm really not meaning to
offend.

As for SIL, I'm not a reasonable facsimile on which anyone should judge that
organisation. Save perhaps UNESCO, I don't know of any other organisation that
is doing as much to help the linguistic communities of thousands of languages
around the world (the vast majority of them being lesser known to the western
world) develop resources to use their languages in ways they want. With regard
to computing, SIL doesn't have all the resources that Unicode and ISO have to
apply to developing things that will serve all of the languages of the world,
but we certainly are trying, and trying to do so in a way that empowers others
to do what they want, not just what we think is best. We may not always achieve
that perfectly, but that's at least our intent.

So, if there was anything in what I've written in my messages that was offensive
to you, then I do sincerely apologise for the offense and assure you that none
was intended, either to any individual subscriber to this list, or to speakers
of any language.

Regards,

Peter



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