Subject: Re: (i18n.261) NL locale

From: Michael Everson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 May 95 15:10:00 +0100 (BST)

I must say that I personally admire the restraint that Mr Simonsen
showed in his response to Mr van Wingen's provocative complaint
regarding a POSIX Locale for the Netherlands.

Indeed, it must be very difficult for the government of the Netherlands
to procure any software at all. To my knowledge, neither IBM, nor
Microsoft, nor Apple software localized for the Netherlands uses
the Turkish code table which ships with software localized for the
Turkish market. I suppose the Mr van Wingen will be writing equally
provocative letters to those multinational corporations regarding
his country's requirements.

Mr van Wingen is, like all of us, also able to make mistakes. One can
consider some of Mr van Wingen's publications regarding letters used to
write European languages for instance. Despite numerous requests to
include in the tables dotted consonants used in some writing styles of
Irish Gaelic, Mr van Wingen refused to do so and published a specification
which, for Irish Gaelic, at least, is inadequate. The note in his text
suggesting that dotted consonants may become more popular "if printing
technology improves" is rather embarrassing. I informed Mr van Wingen
about discussions in the NSAI regarding support for dotted characters
in 10646 and in the CEN prENV Mandatory European Subset of 10646.
I invited him to read "Gramadach na Gaeilge agus Litriu/ na Gaeilge",
which is the Official Standard, to determine whether dotted consonants
were in fact PROSCRIBED in Irish (which they are not). In any event
Mr van Wingen published his opus with the source for Irish Gaelic as
a "Teach Yourself Irish" book published in another country, ignoring
the reasonable requests of Irish experts. I should think that in light
of this Mr van Wingen's comments regarding national expertise may be
taken for what they are worth.

In _Standards for the electronic exchange of personal data_, part 5,
p. 110, in the normative Annex to the Atlantic subset, there is a
subrepertoire given entitled ADDITIONAL IRISH which refers to these
characters and their 10646 code points. This normative Annex does
not appear in _Normen voor de elektronische uitwisseling van persoons-
gegevens_, deel 5. It was nice to discover the chart in the English
version, even if the glyphs were not available. Mr van Wingen has our
thanks for including that chart; but it is unfortunate that in his
other publications he has not been consistent.

>The "made in Denmark" NL-locale specifies Latin-1 (8859-1).

So does the map on p. 107 of _Normen voor de elektronische uitwisseling
van persoonsgegevens_, deel 5. It's on p. 115 of the English version.

>Implementers of locales are warned that use of this Danish version could
>make their software unsuitable to government procurement. Should they
>suffer loss of business as a result of having based their product on an
>unofficial locale, a claim for damages to that Danish firm is perfectly
>justified.

Shame on you Johan. We are all trying to work to make this a better
place to compute in. Can't you, please, try to play nicely?

Best regards,
Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta
15 Port Chaeimhghein I/ochtarach; Baile A/tha Cliath 2; E/ire*Ireland
Gutha/in:   +353 1 478-2597, +353 1 283-9396   Facsa: +353 1 283-7778
27 Pa/irc an Fhe/ithlinn; Baile an Bho/thair; Co. A/tha Cliath; E/ire