Major Enhancements to the Unicode Standard (link)

[MiaKalish@RedPony]

I do truly hate to be a cynic, especially so early in the morning of a day
of changing seasons, and a holiday, but I went to this link, checked it out.
. . found the following. . .

"
Version 4.0 encodes over 96,000 characters, twice as many as Version 3.0,
and includes two record-breaking collections of encoded characters. The
largest encoded character collection for Chinese characters in the history
of
computing has doubled in size yet again to encompass over 2000 years of
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese literary usage, including all the
main classical dictionaries of these languages. Version 4.0 also encodes the
largest set of characters for mathematical and technical publishing in
existence. The character repertoires of Version 4.0 and International
Standard
ISO/IEC 10646 are fully synchronized.

"

What this says is that the Number of CHINESE characters DOUBLED. . .  how
many were there to begin with? I couldn't find a single printed number, but
this page will give you a clue as to how vast the collection is:
http://www.unicode.org/charts/unihan.html.

I will grant that the number of encoded characters is probably "record
breaking". . .  but I couldn't find any for Native American languages. . .

. . . and of course there are new characters for "mathematical and technical
publishing". . . new specifications for processing script. . . (who writes
in Script? The MIDDLE EAST writes in Script! Isn't it wonderful that the
Unicode Consortium is supporting the War on Terrorism.) The script people
met in Berlin, Paris, London and Athens. Anyone care to guess who the major
players are?

Finally, despite what this seems to say, you still need someone to IMPLEMENT
the functionality. Everyone thinks: Oh, Groovy, there is a Standard for our
language. We will be able to write in our language right out of the box.
NOT. Support for Native American languages has to be built from the bottom
up: fonts, input methodologies, spell-checkers, grammar-checkers .These two
are NOT the same; At Red Pony, we have a spell-check technology, and fonts,
but not a grammar-checker because the grammar checker requires much more
complex code than the lexicon that can be used as the spell-checker. Grammar
requires a not only major investments of time and money (and these two are
not necessarily the same) but also a substantial compendium of
knowledge.Unfortunately, the people who are native speakers don't know about
technology and linguistic sophistication, and those who know one
(technology), the other (linguistic sophistication), or both, are not native
speakers, don't know the old language(s), or lack linguistic sophistication
in the target.

So much for my rant this bright and cheery, crispy cool First Day of
September morning in Tularosa, NM.

Mia Kalish
Red Pony HLT & NMSU




----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Cash Cash" <cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU>
To: <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2003 10:53 AM
Subject: Major Enhancements to the Unicode Standard (link)


> Dear ILAT,
>
> I thought this news article might be of interest.  Just follow the link.
>
> Major Enhancements to the Unicode Standard
>
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=SVBIZINK3.story&STORY=/www
/story/08-27-2003/0002007261&EDATE=WED+Aug+27+2003,+09:03+AM
>
> Phil
> UofA, ILAT
>
>