Subject: Mnemonics that are short and not linguistically biased

From: ALB <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1992 14:35 GMT

Dave Taylor writes:

:Before I leave this note, it is true that I suggest a set of mnemonics
:that are defined for English.  Indeed, it's just as ethnocentric as
:all the original computer design that -- significantly -- got us into
:this mess in the first place.  Mea culpa.  But having the 'standard'
:mnemonics in English doesn't preclude localization teams from having
:their own application specific mapping of English to local language
:for within their code.  Perhaps something like:

I must say first it is very ethnocentrist indeed but it is not the only vice.
Some character names have up to 82 characters (a few samples I gathered but
there might be some longer). Also ISO standards are published in English,
French and Russian (this is also wise as this may serve as a guide for
local translation into other languages): then names will be triple. And 82
characters in a program is as ugly as what Dave says for ''': it will not
fit on a single standard 80-column screen (very annoying).

Second why use English internally (even for mnemonics): there are far shorter
and more easily understandable ways: some character names would mean nothing
anyway to most people but if they are described using symbols there is a
chance that we can have an idea of their shape.

Third it is desirable that the mnemonics be the same worldwide for portability.
Then my opinion is the short ids must be mnemonic as far as possible (suggesting
the character shape), be human language independent, which is highly possible
(even Keld's system can be improved: I made good suggestions to him that he
agreed were good to remove the linguistic bias while also improving the
mnemonic aspect). Then the id should be as short as possible.

                   Alain LaBont/e
                   Minist\ere des Communications du Qu/ebec