copy/pasting rtl data
on
Mozilla 1.4 RC1
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This bug is particularly troublesome. It looks like the latest version of Mozilla hasn't addressed the problem. Any plans to make it possible to copy/paste data from the many Arabic and Hebrew sites?
Someone needs to write books that address the need to deal with multiple language, bidi and related issues. PHP and MySQL can handle more than most people think, but one thing holding the non-Latin-1 development back is a rather chronic case of Latin1-centricity.
While Google is good at providing access to information in multiple languages, its news search is monolingual (English), at the moment. A new blog section might similarly mean a new section for English-based blogs only - not the approach I would like to see.
Rather than wait to see how Google will handle this and the issue of determining what is and is not a blog, this would be a good time for people involved in the affected industries and media to set forth practical definitions of blogs, klogs and whathaveyou and make recommendations.
Sooner the better.
The county officials say Elvish will soon be in demand. Some of the up and coming generation may be convinced that they can speak only Tengwar...or perhaps the Black Speech.
It would be good to see some of the region's very special Native American languages get some PR out of this wave.
Does blogging aversely affect the professional writer's writing? The Guardian interview touches on an important question, but only briefly - this is one that should probably be tackled by a team of researchers. When I started up a simple blog-on-a-Wiki last December, I was a bit plagued by a similar question: Why would writers write in their free time?
For me, as long as I can get away with taking one or even two week breaks from the blog, it is not a problem. "Write when you need to, blog when you can," is about where I find myself at the moment.
Ordinary people are still having major issues when trying to work in utf-8.
If everyone had the latest browsers, fonts, OS et al, or found it really easy to get these things, working with utf-8 would be much easier.
But in reality, a lot of people just get confused, frustrated or both when their environment doesn't display certain characters, or when they get screen garbage when trying to input some data in a submit field.
I thought I might have a look through the latest computer magazines in Japan just the other day. While there were ruminations about Redhat 8, I didn't come across Mandrake or Suse, two distributions I had expected to find. In addition to Turbolinux, Plamo and Kondara are big here.
It would be nice to see the other big players in my neighborhood bookshop, though. How about it, guys? Difficult to penetrate, or just haven't taken the disks to the magazine publishers?
If you're really interested in this stuff, do a Google for 'Jim Breen', the professor from Monash who is possibly the leading expert in the field - he's also a hell of a nice guy.
A localized distibution probably has lots of fun items in it, and that would be the best to use if your friend is not a Unix-oriented person.
Others without a localized setup might do well to use Yudit (http://www.yudit.org) an editor that can handle and convert between utf-8, big-5, gb and all other encoding. Very useful when dealing various flavors of Chinese data.
For an "office" type app, Openoffice (http://www.openoffice.org) is the way to go. Just set up the fonts and encoding settings and off you go.
Cedictlookup is a difficult-to-find but very nice Chinese<->English dictionary. Bit of a memory hog, but it does a good job and works in both Big-5 and GB.
Why not make something that can be
used by ordinary people during peactime
activities...like at the FIFA
World Cup that kicks off tomorrow. Think
of the demand for interpretation, machine or otherwise.
This notion has existed in Japan (and perhaps other parts of Asia) for some time. I refer to it as the Manjusri Effect in an upcoming column here: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/shukan-st/articles/ .
Fair warning: should be avoided by people who have no interest in the FIFA World Cup which will commence very soon.
"Manjusri Effect" is taken from the proverb: "if three people put their heads together they will generate the wisdom of Manjusri" (the Buddhist deity of Omniscience).
The related webpage noted in the article is here (under construction):
http://www.issho.org/tl/ourmessages-fifa2002.html
Similar schemes are now in place in
a number of cities and towns around
the world. Apparently it didn't
survive the changes in the Cambridge
political climate, but "mad idea?"
I think not.
Slashdot Mirror
This bug is particularly troublesome. It looks like the latest version of Mozilla hasn't addressed the problem. Any plans to make it possible to copy/paste data from the many Arabic and Hebrew sites?
Someone needs to write books that address the need to deal with multiple language, bidi and related issues. PHP and MySQL can handle more than most people think, but one thing holding the non-Latin-1 development back is a rather chronic case of Latin1-centricity.
But this plane is leaning over to the right in a most alarming manner. Could it be that on Mars stars weigh considerably more than stripes?
While Google is good at providing access to information in multiple languages, its news search is monolingual (English), at the moment. A new blog section might similarly mean a new section for English-based blogs only - not the approach I would like to see.
Rather than wait to see how Google will handle this and the issue of determining what is and is not a blog, this would be a good time for people involved in the affected industries and media to set forth practical definitions of blogs, klogs and whathaveyou and make recommendations.
Sooner the better.
I stand corrected.
Tengwar is the writing system, not a language.
Thanks for pointing that out.
It would be good to see some of the region's very special Native American languages get some PR out of this wave.
oops. aversely => adversely
Does blogging aversely affect the professional writer's writing? The Guardian interview touches on an important question, but only briefly - this is one that should probably be tackled by a team of researchers. When I started up a simple blog-on-a-Wiki last December, I was a bit plagued by a similar question:
Why would writers write in their free time?
For me, as long as I can get away with taking one or even two week breaks from the blog, it is not a problem. "Write when you need to, blog when you can," is about where I find myself at the moment.
You need to look more closely at that data - you are missing a few zeros.
Ordinary people are still having major issues when trying to work in utf-8.
If everyone had the latest browsers, fonts, OS et al, or found it really easy to get these things, working with utf-8 would be much easier.
But in reality, a lot of people just get confused, frustrated or both when their environment doesn't display certain characters, or when they get screen garbage when trying to input some data in a submit field.
sigh...
I thought I might have a look through the latest computer magazines in Japan just the other day. While there were ruminations about Redhat 8, I didn't come across Mandrake or Suse, two distributions I had expected to find. In addition to Turbolinux, Plamo and Kondara are big here.
It would be nice to see the other big players in my neighborhood bookshop, though. How about it, guys? Difficult to penetrate, or just haven't taken the disks to the magazine publishers?
If you're really interested in this stuff, do a Google for 'Jim Breen', the professor from Monash who is possibly the leading expert in the field - he's also a hell of a nice guy.
Indeed, he is.
Here's Jim's Japanese page.
cxterm's input method should be adequate.
This is possible with the most recent Yudit.
Linux handles Chinese very well.
A localized distibution probably
has lots of fun items in it, and
that would be the best to use
if your friend is not a Unix-oriented
person.
Others without a localized setup
might do well to use Yudit
(http://www.yudit.org) an editor
that can handle and convert
between utf-8, big-5, gb
and all other encoding. Very
useful when dealing various
flavors of Chinese data.
For an "office" type app,
Openoffice
(http://www.openoffice.org)
is the way to go. Just set up
the fonts and encoding
settings and off you go.
Cedictlookup is a difficult-to-find
but very nice Chinese<->English
dictionary. Bit of a memory hog,
but it does a good job and
works in both Big-5 and GB.
Tony Laszlo, Tokyo
Why not make something that can be used by ordinary people during peactime activities...like at the FIFA World Cup that kicks off tomorrow. Think of the demand for interpretation, machine or otherwise.
Correction on that URL for the Manjusri Effect. Should be here: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ shukan-st/st-articles.htm The article.
This notion has existed in Japan (and perhaps other parts of Asia) for some time. I refer to it as the Manjusri Effect in an upcoming column here: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/shukan-st/articles/ . Fair warning: should be avoided by people who have no interest in the FIFA World Cup which will commence very soon. "Manjusri Effect" is taken from the proverb: "if three people put their heads together they will generate the wisdom of Manjusri" (the Buddhist deity of Omniscience). The related webpage noted in the article is here (under construction): http://www.issho.org/tl/ourmessages-fifa2002.html
Similar schemes are now in place in a number of cities and towns around the world. Apparently it didn't survive the changes in the Cambridge political climate, but "mad idea?" I think not.