From: Arcane Jill (arcanejill@ramonsky.com)
Date: Wed Dec 03 2003 - 07:12:05 EST
Sigh. What it is to be constantly misunderstood.
In an earlier email on this thread, Peter Constable said "/So, out of
the box, Windows XP does not support (e.g.) Sinhalese, or ship with
Sinhalese fonts. And so, if the next version of Windows does include
support for Sinhalese and perhaps even ships with one or more Sinhalese
fonts, that will be added value, right?/". What I was trying to get at
is that, essentially, I was agreeing with him, that yes, that /would/ be
added value, and something for which I would expect to pay money. Ditto
Telugu. But I wasn't suggesting for a moment that it should constitute
"added value" for those who use it every day as part of /their/ culture.
For /them/, it should be "out of the box". I stress that I imply /_no_/
cultural bias. It is my opinion that, regardless of one's culture, the
symbols you use every day should be the ones which come supplied out of
the box, and the ones which would be considered rare or esoteric in
one's own culture should be the ones for which you should be expected to
pay extra.
So no, I was not suggesting a bias toward my culture. Rather, I was
suggesting that the final sentence of my above paragraph should the rule
in all cultures.
In short, in any given locale, one should get the symbols of that
locale, out of the box. (And in my locale, that should include math and
music symbols). My apologies if that was not clear, but rest assured I
absolutely am not "ethnocentric". I was merely stating what I think is
not an unreasonable user expectation for /anyone/, regardless of culture.
Jill
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Everson [mailto:everson@evertype.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 11:22 AM
> To: unicode@unicode.org
> Subject: RE: MS Windows and Unicode 4.0 ?
>
> I think some of what you are saying here is really ethnocentric and a
> bit offensive. There are 69 million speakers of Telugu. I don't think
> your need for math symbols outweighs their need to send basic e-mail
> and do online banking. And you can get math software for your
> platform if you really need it. Mathemeticians do.
> --
> Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
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