Re: HTML5 Issue 11 (encoding detection): I18N WG response...

Ian Hickson On 09-10-12 07.57:

> On Mon, 12 Oct 2009, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
>> My understanding, from what I learned from Ian, is that HTML5 tries to 
>> make it easier to write a browser, without doing reverse-engineering. 
>> But the problem with the current "western demographic" wording is that 
>> browser implementers will have to re-engineer that term. As Leif 
>> explains in quite some detail, the definition is indeed quite circular: 
>> iso-8859-1 was designed for the iron curtain period Western Europe (with 
>> some limitations), and windows-1252 follows that that. But the term 
>> "Western" has many meanings, and is used much more differenciated these 
>> days, and languages completely unrelated to Western Europe (Kurdish, 
>> Swahili) use iso-8859-1 just because they fit in (and quite some more 
>> languages for windows-1252).
> 
> I agree that we shouldn't mention Europe (and we don't), but I'm not sure 
> what term would be better than "Western". It seems to be a pretty good fit 
> based on Wikipedia's map:
> 
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
> 
> Certainly not perfect, but I'm not sure what would be better without going 
> into extreme detail and listing specific countries.

Had you actually read that article, then you would have noticed:

that Greece + [entire!] Cyprus are included in the Western world;
that Poland is included (hint: Copernicus);
that Israel is included;
that the city were the Immanuel Kant was born is /not/ included.
that the article has warnings about not meeting Wikipedia quality 
standards and for not having reliable sources.

I smell that you - once again - are out after cutting linguistic 
corners, such as in the debate about URLs, URIs, resources and 
representation etc.

Quite dilettantish, actually.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Monday, 12 October 2009 11:46:30 UTC