From ALB%SEAS@liverpool.ac.uk Thu Jan 16 17:14:03 1992 Received: from danpost2.uni-c.dk by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8) id AA01592; Thu, 16 Jan 92 17:14:03 +0100 Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by danpost2.uni-c.dk (5.65/1.34) id AA13221; Thu, 16 Jan 92 14:46:49 GMT Message-Id: <9201161446.AA13221@danpost2.uni-c.dk> Received: from vm.uni-c.dk by vm.uni-c.dk (IBM VM SMTP V2R1) with BSMTP id 2510; Thu, 16 Jan 92 15:47:09 DNT Received: from UKACRL.BITNET by vm.uni-c.dk (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 3396; Thu, 16 Jan 92 15:47:08 DNT Received: from RL.IB by UKACRL.BITNET (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 8604; Thu, 16 Jan 92 14:45:52 GMT Received: from RL.IB by UK.AC.RL.IB (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 5824; Thu, 16 Jan 92 14:40:50 GMT Via: UK.AC.LIV.IBM; 16 JAN 92 14:37:21 GMT Received: from ALB@SEAS by MAILER(4.1.a); 16 Jan 1992 14:38:11 GM Addressed-To: I18N@EARN.DK.DKUUG Via MAILER Addressed-From: ALAIN_LA_BONTE (Alain LaBonte O1 418 644 1835) Subject: Mnemonics that are short and not linguistically biased Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1992 14:35 GMT To: I18N@DKUUG.DK From: ALB X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 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