Actually, UNIX/POSIX locale IDs only have three elements: language, region,
and character set. (e.g. en_US.iso8859-1, zh_TW.big5)
In the past, the character set implied Trad or Simplified. I am simplifying
the case here, of course. However, if we all switch to Unicode, then nothing
is implied by the charset field anymore... ;-)
Also, the way the first two are set up, zh==Chinese, which tells us nothing
about which dialect and which writing system. TW==Taiwan, which implies
traditional. But if we use CN (PRC), that tells us nothing at all if you
wish to disambiguate within the vast variation that is China. Not to mention
the cultural sensitivity problems if the only way to talk about the
_Thoughts of Chairman Mao_ is to use a region setting like Taiwan!
In actual fact, the locale structure itself has much more information in it,
but the way we identify these things was not really structured for this
level of differentiation. There are many areas of the world in which we just
gloss over the problems with the locale ID structure by adopting something
that doesn't quite fit.
The other major locale ID structure in use is DOS/Windows', which is a
variation of the first: it has only TWO elements (language and regional
variation). Code page is implied by the locale or set separately.
A key point here for Chinese is that all computer locales have relies on the
fact (or is it a "fact") that the various dialects use the same writing
system and thus we can ignore dialect in setting up our computer locale
information (dialect will presumably be supplied by writers/translators).
Addison
__________________________________________
Addison Phillips
Director, Globalization Consulting
SimulTrans, L.L.C.
2606 Bayshore Parkway
Mountain View, California 94043 USA
+1 650-526-4652 (direct telephone)
+1 650-969-9959 (facsimile)
AddisonP@simultrans.com (Internet email)
http://www.simultrans.com (website)
"22 languages. One release date."
__________________________________________
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter_Constable@sil.org [mailto:Peter_Constable@sil.org]
Sent: vendredi 16 juillet 1999 08:02
To: Unicode List
Subject: Re: Naming font styles for Chinese ideographs
John Cowan wrote:
>Indeed, the use of traditional characters is not unknown in CN;
some editions of the _Thoughts of Chairman Mao__ were published in
it. Therefore, neither language nor locale is sufficient.
Can you please explain for me the last sentence - I'm still trying to wrap
my
brain around locales. Would it not be possible to define Chinese (some
particular dialect) x PRC x traditional and Chinese x PRC x simplified as
locales?
Peter
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