Re: Unicode...

[Erik Naggum <erik@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	Very sorry you're so overwhelmingly negative on Unicode.
	Apparently we haven't even a patch of common ground for
	discussion.

That's a fair summary of my position.  My position vis-a-vis Unicode is
about same as the one I have vis-a-vis MS-DOS, EBCDIC, IBM PC-8, IBM
codepages, Intel 808[86] and 80[12]86, WordPerfect, UK domain name
order, Turbo C, Herbert Schildt, Byte Magazine, Donald E. Knuth's
computer modern typeface family, default LaTeX typography and layout,
point-and-click interfaces for everything, Oslo's Yellow Pages directory
for 1990, OSI protocols (not OSI concepts), Coke Light, hmmm, I'm
running out of things I dislike, but you get the flavor.  The element
all these things have in common is bad engineering caused by sloppiness
and lack of attention to detail, often in combination with visions of
grandeur.

You may have noticed that a lot of these things are popular among large
segments of the public, caused, not by the judicious choices of the
public with regard to these particular things, but by the judicious
choices of the public with respect to significant parts of the package
deal combined with the lack of proper attention by the developer to
issues that would not be instrumental to sales, and for which both the
vendor and all the customers world-wide would suffer for a large number
of years.

	Please, on a public mailing, it might we wise to avoid some of
	the expletives.

I'm sorry that you have a hangup on expletives which causes them to be
multiplied in your perception.  Let me apologize for having used a
strong qualifier to the word "_EVIL_" in regard to IBM character sets.
I would like to rephrase that, while I have the chance:

    IBM does not properly have character sets for their PC and PS/2
    family of computers; they have visual representations of binary
    information, accidentally twistable into being useful for human
    communication needs.

[Erik]