Re: tlug: Re: Japanese input

[Karl-Max Wagner <karlmax@example.com>]

> done.  I read somewhere recently that there is even an
> entire magazine published in romaji, by a group that favors
> abolishing kanji.
Interesting ! Please give me more info !
> However, as you mentioned, the cultural pressure against
> doing away with kanji would be so great that other issues
> would essentially not even matter, I think.
Politics is wonderful, isn't it ?
> The political difficulty of getting a unified Linux input
> method (and this is what makes it more or less impossible,
> rather than technical problems) pales beside the idea of
Not sure. If there's already a group publishing a magazine in
romaji, there is some hope, though.
> the kanji.  Everyone says kanji is tough, but I think not
> many people would actually want to change it.  Look at us
Not sure either. I heard already from a lot of Japanese that
"nobody likes Kanji and they should be done away with"
> Linux users:  sure the learning curve is killingly cruel
> coming over from another OS, but do we or do we not take
> pride in that? :-)
I come from CP/M and DOS. Linux uses basically the same concepts
with extensions for new things. If you just want the power of
DOS, it's pretty much as complicated ( or simple ) to use. Linux
uses simple alphabetic writing. On the contrary, Windoze uses
specific Kanji throughout ( they call them "icons", but the
concept is the same ). I hate this whole pictogram idea. Writing
was invented to eliminate the need for pictograms. And now comes
M$ and sends us back into the Old Egyptian Realm ( at that time
hieroglyphs were still pictograms very much like today's Kanji.
It was in the Middle Realm period when they gradually
reengineered that into an alphabet like system. This was more
than 3 milleniums ago )........

I HATE unnecessary complexity. I never came to terms with my
Commodore CBM8032. The thing was full pof idiotic quirks that
absolutely served no purpose. I hated the machine. I was a real
treat when I got my TDV2114 assembled and got CP/M up and
running on that. What a wonderful, simple and powerful OS CP/M
was. Actually, it was a lot cleaner than MSDOS. I played with
the latter for some time without a lot of love for it until I
ran into Linux. Whoa ! This was a lot like CP/M and a lot more
powerful....and you just needed to learn as much as the job at
hand called for. No idiotic quirks. No unnecessary complexity.
And super fast. No graphics if you don't want them. And a fast
graphical system if you need it. In short: it was The Right
Thing. You really could get things done with it with an
environment you can tailor to what you really need. That was
what got me hooked. I like Linux for its tremendous usefulness,
not as a toy for itself. I don't hack around a lot with Linux.
Most of the time I want it to get stuff done for me.

                            Karl-Max Wagner
                            karlmax@example.com
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