RE: Multilingual Documents [was: HTML forms and UTF-8]

From: Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com
Date: Wed Nov 24 1999 - 13:38:28 EST


John, il limerick francese ("Une jolie epousette...") non era necessario: la
citazione di Coleridge contenuta nella "signature" della tua e-mail
("Schlingt dreifach...") costituiva già un esempio sufficiente di documento
multilingue... (Ah! This is the good thing of multilingual systems: that
you can use your own language and anybody else can read it:-)

The fact is that "multilingual documents" have never been a problem, as far
as all the involved languages share the same character set. The real problem
is with *multi-script documents*, and I guess that this shrinks the ratio
even more.

Yet, I always understood that one of the key reasons that caused Unicode to
be settles was to make this kind of documents possible. And indeed, for some
particular applications, multilingual documents are the rule:

- grammar books;

- search facilities for international content (like the search engines on
Internet, or the electronic catalogue of a large library);

- language selection menus;

- public signs, notices, and electronic terminals in multilingual contexts
(Switzerland, India, the EU, an airport).

Ciao.
        Marco

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Cowan [SMTP:jcowan@reutershealth.com]
> Sent: 1999 November 24, Wednesday 17.28
> To: Unicode List
> Subject: Re: Multilingual Documents [was: HTML forms and UTF-8]
>
> Otto Stolz wrote:
>
> > If only documents containing the very same content in several languages
> > are deemed "multilingual", then the ratio between those documents and
> the
> > other ones will indeed be exceedingly small (as that notorious limerick
> > says: "it requres good light and a very strong sight in order to see it,
> > at all").
>
> Thank you! You have just given me an excuse to make this a
> multilingual document by posting the following *thing* which I have
> just discovered:
>
> Une jolie epousette à Tours
> voulait de jig-jig tous le jours.
> Mais le mari disait, "Non!
> De trop n'est pas bon!
> Mon derriere exigé du secours!"
>
> I would have sworn that limericks were confined to English (and Lojban).
>
> --
>
> John Cowan http://www.reutershealth.com
> jcowan@reutershealth.com
> Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! / Schliess eurer Aug vor heiliger
> Schau
> Den er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.
> -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)



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