On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 11:58:40 -0800, i18n@... <i18n@...> wrote:

> I have heard the same about the derivation of "Exxon", which replaced
> the earlier "Esso". I don't think anyone in the business world is
> interested in the writing systems of *all* languages, only the ones
> pertinent to the markets where one intends to do business.

One thing I consider blatantly dumb is adding diacritical marks (correct
term? Sorry; should know) for their decorative appearance, as, for
instance, in Mötley Crüe, the name of a rock band. Jason cosmetics did
have some bizarre decorative diacritics some years ago. I wrote them and
hollered, and that might have been one of many letters that made them
adopt something more believable.

===

> Which makes me wonder if there is a "Zipf's power law" among the number
> of languages versus some economic indicator about the ranking
> desirability of doing business there (in some vague undefined sense
> right now).

I do note that the Opera browser added handling of Cyrillic, then Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean, and iirc not too long afterward started offering
BiDi and Arabic shaping and joining, although with a few minor bugs along
the way. However, it still does not render SE Asian and Indic scripts
correctly, afaik. Microsoft has a subsidiary that at last provides decent
support (afaik) for the major Indic languages.

Wonder whether there will ever be a text editor to handle top-down
languages...

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath
Using Opera 8 public beta 1