Re: gender locale information (was Re: ISO/IEC 10646 and ISO/IEC 1)

From: Dominikus Scherkl (lyratelle@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Oct 02 2006 - 03:51:40 CST

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    Jefsey_Morfin schrieb:

    > > Do your realy consider this "linguistic genders"?
    > [...] We obviously need a gender for the
    > computer (ex. 2001 Space Odissey): ask women around you the gender of a
    > computer. They will say masculine because they think computers are not
    > as clever as a woman. This also means that we need a French "on" for a
    > group of persons and computers (a network) with unprecise delimitations.
    > Many legal, philosophical, logical issues are involved.
    This sounds more like you want new personal pronouns (like he/she/it)
    for Computers and Networks. Sounds useful, but: even if there were some
    invented, how would they need other characters assigned? New words
    should be written with the same chacacters as all other words.
    And it is by far not clear, what types of genders each individual person
       feel would be nessessary. I, for example, am much more interested in
    a "gender" for "Juristische Person" (company) - those are acting
    entities with their own "will", so much more likely to occure as
    conversation partner than computers or networks.

    > discussed the sex of the invisible angels, do you want us to do the same
    > for the ubiquitous computers. The same as the male, female signs, we
    > need equivalent new signs.
    Not before there is a clear agreement on what genders there are.
    Is the gender of "computer" realy different of that of "company" or
    "network" or "neuter" or whatever you think should be differentiated?
    Or do "artifact" and "group" suffice?
    I see no near end of such a discussion.

    > > This realy gets off-topic.

    > Tell me how to code a sign of authority (like a pennant) in Unicode?
    Unicode codes existing characters. It's not it's business to invent
    some. If you have a sign of authority in use somewhere, it's not
    unlikely unicode will encode it sometime.

    > [...] Either you legislate or you inform. Doing both results in confusion.
    So, how could this get better if you do not only both but also invent
    new things? (or does this subsum to legislate?)

    However, unicode should do neither. It should "make available" (which
    includes inform in a way, but that's not the main purpose).

    Best regards,

    -- 
    Dominikus Scherkl
    


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