Re: Bopomofo keyboards in Taiwan

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> i18n@... wrote:
>
> > Someone mentioned Michale as being a "cultural imperialist" for
> > proposing and acting on his plan and not giving up in the face of the
>
> No, for insisting that the only way to proceed is through roman-alphabet
> literacy.

I haven't sen him write that and I presume I am reading the same things
you are. I *have* seen him suggest several times that he welcomes others
to design and implement other solutions. I infer he is comfortable with
letting the market place decide which people will use which - it may
very well be some people will use one type and others, who are already
more educated in English will prefer to use his. I doubt he objects to
that - I wouldn't.

>
>
> It's a historical accident that keyboards were first devised for one of
> the most symbol-poor scripts in the world, the English alphabet, with
> only 26 letters (in two varieties) and no diacritics. Billions of people
> in the world live in cultures whose scripts involve many more symbols
> than that; the most obvious is Japan, with 50 letters (in two
> varieties). A 50-letter keyboard could also accommodate most of the
> Indic scripts.

Yeah well the history of technology is littered with such accidents. You
can't go back and undo them, you can only build on what is already
there. And right now the state of the art, as I explained, and Michael
is exploiting, is that anyone with the right skills and savvy, can, for
FREE, produce any sort of keyboard and/or text entry software they want.
No accidents. If you want to, right now is your opportunity to build it
the way you want to!

>
>
> The one you advocate being the latter, of course. Would you like to
> repeat the 19th-century experience of colonialism? Have you read up on
> "globalization"? Hint: in the Third World it's not generally considered
> a Good Thing.

So why are you making rhetorical leaps that position your school of
thought firmly in that camp? Have you actually anything to say on the
merits and thread of the actual discussion or are you jsut in the mood
to rant about cultural imperialism this week?

I am not going to get into a war of words with you - I don't have the
time. This is a discussion about writing systems - I am sure there are
plenty of other lists that discuss cultural imperialism in all its
forms. Let's stay on topic here :)

Best,

Barry