[Lexicog] UNICODE

[Timothy Montler]

In the late 1980's and early 1990's I distributed some phonetics fonts 
with a unique encoding for characters 128-255 (so-called "upper 
ascii").  A lot of people used them and I know that some people entered 
a great deal of data using these fonts.  I've created a couple of simple 
programs--one for text files and one for MSWord files--for converting my 
old peculiar encoding into Unicode.  Anyone who has data that needs to 
be converted may download the programs from:  
http://129.120.44.33/Convert/tm2unicode.htm

    Tim Montler


Mike Maxwell wrote:

>Jimm GoodTracks wrote:
>  
>
>>What is the thoughts of those who are well into their dictionary work
>>and may be confronted with the task of redoing it all over again in the
>>Unicode fonts.
>>    
>>
>
>This story is not about my dictionary, but I was a consultant on it.  At 
>the LDC, Yiwola Awoyale compiled a large dictionary of Yoruba in Shoebox, 
>using a hacked (home-made) font.  I recently wrote a simple encoding 
>converter that changed this unique encoding into Unicode.
>
>It wasn't a question of re-doing anything, it was simply a question of 
>running the encoding converter over the dictionary and opening the result 
>in a Unicode-aware editor (we used Toolbox) to make sure things came 
>through correctly.  (As it turns out, there were some difficulties in the 
>resulting Unicode, having to do with stacked diacritics that didn't appear 
>correctly in the Arial Unicode MS font.  So I modified the converter and we 
>ran it again, using a different way of representing the stacked diacritics. 
>  For the techies here, the better visual result was obtained with a 
>non-normalized Unicode representation.)
>
>The other issue we had to deal with was the keyboard setup.  Yiwola had 
>been using one keyboard program, but Toolbox doesn't work with that.  So we 
>had to install Keyman, and produce a key mapping that conformed to the way 
>Yiwola is used to doing them.  Last I heard there were some other minor 
>issues with this, but I expect them to be solved.
>
> > Is it not unlike the large nations imposing their national language
>  
>
>>on the minority languages, Tagalog, English, Japanese, et.al., on the 
>>individual Filipino, the Native American and Spanish/ Chinease Americans
>>or the Ainu.   The plan for a standard is well meant, but devaluation
>>sets the course for the minority community language to become an
>>endangered language, and with that, a whole culture world view and way
>>of thinking.  Perhaps it is not the same thing.  
>>    
>>
>
>I agree with the last sentence: I don't see standardising on Unicode as 
>devaluation in any way.  Quite the opposite: it is a way for minority 
>languages to gain access to computational tools despite the fact that the 
>languages in question do not have "market value."   So you can use Unicode 
>to preserve the minority languages.  It is also a way to avoid splintering, 
>where there are different--competing--ways of representing texts in the 
>language.  Here's a comment on splintering in Ethiopic encodings (for 
>languages like Amharic and Tigrinya):
>
>    The task of describing formatting practices in
>    Ethiopia is one on par with describing the shapes
>    of clouds in Ethiopia.
>   (—http://www.abyssiniacybergateway.net/fidel/l10n/)
>
>That is, in the past it has been difficult to share electronic versions of 
>Ethiopic data among different users precisely because there was no 
>standard.  When (or maybe if) Unicode becomes a standard for Ethiopic, this 
>problem will go away, at least for new documents.
>
>There's of course no reason that Unicode has to be the standard for any 
>particular language, but it has the best chance.  There have been other 
>attempts to develop standards for a language or for a group of languages; 
>some have been successful (e.g. Thai), others have not (ISCII, for Indic 
>languages).  But I see no reason not to go with Unicode as a standard.
>
>   Mike Maxwell
>
>
>
> 
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
> 
>
>
>  
>


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