- From: Per Starback <starback@minsk.docs.uu.se>
- Date: Thu, 19 Dec 96 20:24:18 +0100
- To: mogul@pa.dec.com
- Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
Jeffrey Mogul wrote: > Again, I know very little about i18n; is it actually the case that you > cannot always render the text with knowledge of the character set > alone, but must also know the language as well? (I also know very little about i18n. These are free thoughts from me.) I don't think you *must* know it, but it can help. I think it would be beneficial if all texts are marked with natural language. Here are some ways a program might use the information on what language a text is in: * Hyphenate correctly * Transliterate the text into another character set before showing it. How to transliterate might depend on what language the text is in. * Deciding which dictionary to use if the user can look up words in the text in a dictionary from the rendering program. * Do an automatic translation into another language. (A bit far-fetched...) Specific for warning messages like those: * Decide if the warning text sent should be shown, or a stock message associated with that error number instead. -- Per Starback <starback@minsk.docs.uu.se> http://www.update.uu.se/~starback "Life is but a gamble! Let flipism chart your ramble!"
Received on Thursday, 19 December 1996 11:27:44 UTC