it appears to me that this thread is not very different from the idn considerations on usage of idn in the world. So what is really new in this discussion? Marc. -- Tuesday, October 28, 2003 07:10:59 -0800 Mark Davis <mark.davis@jtcsv.com> wrote/a ecrit: >> > (I agree that it's currently nearly impossible to use computers if one >> > isn't familiar with the Latin script, of course.) >> >> Which probably makes the rest of this discussion academic, unless we're >> going to undertake solving *that* problem for Microsoft and the various >> UNIX/Linux vendors... > > It is currently impossible to use the Internet without knowing the Latin > script. However, the goal of most well-designed client software and > operating systems is to permit the user to work entirely within their > native language, with a fully localized system. This is reaching to India > and other countries; Microsoft has introduced fully localized versions of > Indic Windows just recently, and Linux vendors are hard at work to > produce fully localized versions of their software. > > Email and Web addresses are the big remaining holdouts for most people. > People should not be forced to use a script that they are unfamiliar > with, just to use email addresses and sites in their own countries. Even > if they are familiar with the Latin script, it is very often a very bad > match for their languages, making it very difficult to figure out how > native words would be spelled in it. > > Mark > ------------------------------------------ Marc Blanchet Hexago tel: +1-418-266-5533x225 ------------------------------------------ http://www.freenet6.net: IPv6 connectivity ------------------------------------------