At 11:03 -0400 2005-09-01, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>I know for a fact that one of them, John Victor Singer, is not "a Vai,"
>and not a "user of the Vai script."

Yes, John Singler [sic] is not a Vai. He worked
with me and with Chuck Riley and with José Rivera
and with our Vai informants to encode Vai. It was
a pleasure to work with John, who has at all
times been helpful and courteous, and supportive
of the proposal document which in many ways he
helped to refine.

>The details of the proposal are of no concern,
>since if it's implemented it won't be accessible
>to the people who could actually benefit from it
>-- the users of traditional Vai literacy, almost
>all of whom are not literate in English.

Encoding a script in the Universal Character Set
makes that script available for interchange. Vai
people who use computers will be able to write
and exchange Vai texts using the Vai code
positions.

Encoding a script in the Universal Character Set
does not magically localize computer operating
systems into minority languages. It does not
change the sociolinguistic nature of computing in
the early 21st century, freeing users of (e.g.
African) syllabic scripts from the burden of
having to learn to read an alphabet. It's
unrealistic to pretend that they will not have to
learn an alphabet. They will, and you want to
play games and pretend that it's cultural
imperialism that will force them to learn an
alphabet if they want to use computers, then you
can blame all of western civilization on that.

For my part, I am proud of the work we have done
to encode Vai, and I am content that my efforts
to make software available that will enable
computer-using Vais to enter Vai text will, in
fact, benefit computer-using Vais.
--
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com