Re: Unicode & space in programming & l10n

From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Wed Oct 04 2006 - 06:26:48 CST

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    On 3 Oct 2006, at 19:57, Philippe Verdy wrote:

    >>> Codecs in the MPEG family become more and more universal and they
    >>> are the key for mobility!
    >>
    >> This is mainly for larger sized movies. So if compression becomes
    >> less important in the future, that is down the road for movies.
    >
    > You come to that conclusion only because you assume that bandwidth
    > can be extended indefinitely ; it is not, especially in the mobile
    > world, where we are constrained by international regulation
    > frequencies ans physical properties of waves (where longer waves
    > reach larger areas with less black holes than shorter waves which
    > require direct visibility).

    Not really, as I gave the example of the fingerprinting software
    which, by compression, enables uploading on low-bandwidth mobile
    telephones. This might serve as an analogue to a language based
    compression scheme, as fingerprints contains massive information, but
    only a small part is needed for identification:

    So analyzing language structure may (or may not) give good
    compressions. The use of Unicode code point would then just be the
    start of it. But because of the higher bandwidths available, one
    should think carefully over the applications intended before getting
    started, as it might not be always worth the effort:

    The WiMAX <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX> now installed to cover
    the province Södermanland (Sörmland) south of Stockholm will give an
    aerial bandwidth of 1 Mb/s (and already installed in some other
    places around the world), though the standard can give higher rates.
    The prediction for cable bandwidths is that within 10-15 years, 1 Gb/
    s will be the worldwide standard in homes, and my network provider
    has internally already installed one on 10 Gb/s.

    And in 1993, or so I recall, the fastest experimental optical cable
    had bandwidth of 1-10 Tb/s on one color only; the optical cable upper
    limit should be much higher now. So it seems that there is room for
    Moore's law <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_Law> to hold up
    for a couple of decades yet to come also in bandwidths.

    Even at the lower bandwidth of 1 Gb/s, one can download say at least
    100 books per second. How many books are you going to read? :-) - One
    of the fastest human readers is he who stood model for the "Rainman"
    movie, who can read, and memorize, an encyclopedia in about twenty
    minutes (by only reading the parts new from the earlier edition).

       Hans Aberg



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