NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/comp/std/internat/950

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-31 | 4.0 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Glenn A. Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: An alternative I18N paradigm
Date: 31 Dec 1992 08:11:21 GMT
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
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NNTP-Posting-Host: wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu

The real problem, at least as I see it, is that the locale model
doesn't distinguish between the consumer of information and the
producer of information.  It naively assumes that an individual
end user must choose the manner in which (linguistically and
culturally sensitive) information is to be presented, and that
this choice can be determined by one fixed value parameter (i.e.,
the locale setting).

The first assumption quite poorly models the real world of text;
for here the author or editor is usually responsible for the
presentation of the information, including the written form
of that information.  [We are not quite at the state yet when a
system can automatically translate random text to the written form
preferred by the consumer of text.]  The second assumption fails
miserably in the real world of text where many languages are intermixed
sometimes in a single writing system, sometimes in a single document
employing multiple writing systems.

What should first be done is an analysis of the producer and potential
consumers of information.  If the producer is the OS or a local utility,
e.g., /bin/date, and the consumer is a single individual who prefers
reading dates and time in a particular way, and this way can be
characterized by a single (possibly complex) parameter, then the locale
model will work.  However, if the producer is another individual, then
the locale probably should be ignored, and information contained in the
text itself should be consulted about matters such as character set encoding,
font(s), language tag(s), or other presentation information.  In this case,
the locale may be of help only in the case that such explicit information
(encoding, font, etc.) is absent, and here, it may produce complete garbage
if it makes the wrong assumptions.

One may ask where 10646/Unicode fits into all of this?  It provides only
a small part of the solution; namely, a single universal character set
encoding rather than many non-universal encodings.  Of course, one might
propose to solve a small part of the problem by using 10646:  use 10646
for all encoded text.  However, as has been pointed out by Ohta-san and
others, this doesn't solve many other problems, e.g., whether to use a
Chinese or a Japanese font to display a given Han character.  So more
is needed still.

I, for one, do not believe that 10646 will become universally used
in a fortnight.  Local and other standard encodings will continue to
exist, probably forever.  So we need to start doing one thing very
quickly: tagging character data as to its encoding.  Another thing we
need to do, is add language (or writing system) tags to texts which
mix multiple languages.  Alternatively, this could be done by tagging
font runs and then associating languages with those runs [I do not
advocate this method - I prefer explicit language or writing system
tags].  Other kinds of tags might be necessary for certain types
of processing, e.g., yomi (phonetic reading) tags for allowing the
display of furugana, sort keys for allowing producer specified sorting
behavior, and so forth.

10646 will not even address any of these matters.  However, Unicode may
do so in the form of implementation guidelines or further work on I18N.
Nonetheless, I think that it is quite important for many parties to begin
implementing such systems so that development of standard tags and tagging
systems can proceed.  We need prior art and experience in these areas
before effective standards can be developed with a reasonable hope of
success.

Glenn Adams
Cambridge, Massachusetts