Re: Comments on Part 1: Asian characters

> From: Murata Makoto <murata@apsdc.ksp.fujixerox.co.jp>
 
> Rick Jelliffe writes:

> >I can use Western digits in my names. A  Martian  should be free to use Martian 
> digits in their  names.
> 
> Are you proposing to allow them as the first character of a name?  
> Are they letters or digits?

The question is not whether they are letters or digits in limbo, but whether they appear 
in common words.  In English I can have element type identifiers "first", "second",  
"third", etc.   The equivalent Japanese of these would (if my imperfect knowledge 
doesn't embarrass me  too much) be spelled using ideagraphs numbers, no matter 
what counter suffix was used.  Similarly, I could have an element type identifier 
"miscellaneous" in English, but in Japanese  I might wish to use "gomoku" 
(as in yakisoba :-), whether the "go" is 5.

Personally, I can see no great value in allowing anything other than [01-9] as DIGIT in SGML 
and XML. It just seems to complicate things, and IMHO is a spurious and unthinking 
kind of i18n.  [01-9] conveys all the meaning  needed, and everyone understands it. 

Making the ideograph numbers into SGML/XML DIGITs means that users of native-language
markup will be forced to use second-best terms, or to spell out kanji in kana, for many common
words. 

Rick Jelliffe

Received on Wednesday, 11 June 1997 13:50:37 UTC