On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 08:30:16 -0500, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> Nicholas Bodley wrote:

[P. T. D.]

>> > ... i18n, which means nothing to me
>>
>> I'm, well, astonished. Apparently you are not involved at all in any
>> work on making computers work with other writing systems. I guess
>> that's fair,
>
> Why should I be? That is work for computer people.

Because you need to know how to use computers for more than ASCII, and
because computer people need to learn about other writing systems.

>> and perhaps understandable, considering recent discussions. It also
>> seems believable that you don't read at all, or very little, on that
>> topic. I guess that's fair, too. Lots of people could be so described.

> Why should I? Computers aren't intrinsically interesting.

Blanket statement that applies only to some. The remarkable technical
advancements in the field are not created by people who have no interest.
The reason you might be involved, or just aware, is that i19n is, in
itself, interesting, for reasons that at least in part are cultural.

>> the embedded "18" represents the 18 letters that are not typed.
>
> From the point of view of writing systems, that's an incredibly stupid
> abbreviation (and, obviously, totally opaque). From the point of view of
> languages, as well -- a standard example of the sort of rule that's
> "impossible" is any rule that involves _counting_ segments or morphemes
> or words.

It's part of the ongoing evolution of writing systems, and counting (Latin
alphabetical) letters is a good, straighforward, logical basis. It is also
whimsical; computer people tend to like whimsy. (The New Hacker's
Dictionary is an interesting and readable book; it's also online:
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/> We don't have language police, and
something so concise, gently witty, and straightforward is an asset to the
language. Of course, it needs to be explained and defined.

(By the way, I assume you have and use a Web browser. Do you dislike
keying four characters into the search field, and evaluating what you see?)

> As a guess, "internationalization" sounds like it might be what Apple
> called "localization" in its technical manual many years ago, about how
> to get computers to work in languages other than English?

They are somewhat related; I'm not the best person to explain, but i18n is
more concerned, as I see it, with, for instance, making software
Unicode-capable (including e-mail software!), or making Web browsers work
in many scripts. L10n, otoh, refers to setting up one's computer for a
very-specific locale, such as, say, Francophone Canada or Latvia. You
were on the right track.

> Again, doing things by counting is bizarre.

To some people...
Others feel more free to use what they are given.

Peace,

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath