suzmccarth scripsit:

> Then someone ought to say "none of these names have anything to do
> with anything." It should be written right into Unicode version 4.
> I was beginning to suspect just that anyway.

That wouldn't be the whole truth either. The novice *was* able to guess
why the editor is called Emacs (it stands for "Editing MACroS", a name
of historical significance).

> I don't want to sound too miffed. Unicode will be used for what it
> is. I see that. But, I keep wondering about things like "Chinese is
> a largely monosyllabic language so an ideographic system suits it.
> Is that true or just more Emac and Bolio?

Modern Mandarin Chinese definitely isn't monosyllabic, though most of its
morphemes are (with the exceptions I mentioned earlier). The other Sinitic
languages are closer to monosyllabic, and their common ancestor Middle
Chinese was even closer.

--
John Cowan www.ccil.org/~cowan jcowan@... www.reutershealth.com
[P]olice in many lands are now complaining that local arrestees are insisting
on having their Miranda rights read to them, just like perps in American TV
cop shows. When it's explained to them that they are in a different country,
where those rights do not exist, they become outraged. --Neal Stephenson