tlug: On the Politics of Japanese input methods [was: Japanese input]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Byrne <- 3Web <jq@example.com>> writes:

    Jonathan> On Sun, 14 Jun 1998, Olinsky, Craig wrote:
    >> I thought I might chime in here...
    >> 
    >> > > I'd like what discussions went on back in the Middle Realm
    >> > > of Egypt 3000 years ago when they started trashing their
    >> > > Kanji system........ 
    >> Most of them were along the lines
    >> of "We are Christians.  You are Pagans.  You must stop drawing
    >> images of false gods and learn to read our books in our
    >> language, or we will kill you." *accompanied by much burning
    >> and destruction of artifacts*

    Jonathan> I'll refrain from flaming you only because that is not
    Jonathan> in the character of this list, but religious bigotry has
    Jonathan> no place here.  Can it.

It's a shame you didn't just put the period here.  Forceful, but not a 
flame.

    Jonathan> And if you make even the most cursory examination of
    Jonathan> history, you will also discover that there *were no
    Jonathan> Christians* in Egypt or anywhere else 3,000 years ago.
    Jonathan> The Christian era doesn't date back that far.

This isn't a flame in your opinion?

If you make a slightly more in-depth investigation, you'll discover
that Craig's description is quite exact, for a much later time period
(some Roman Emperors; Charlemagne; the Crusades), of course.  I am
sure that nobody got executed in Japan in the 1930s for saying
"be-subo-ru" instead of "yakkyuu", but I wouldn't want to have been a
radio announcer who slipped.  I doubt you'll be physically assaulted,
but there are Frenchmen who will insult you rudely for saying "le
French fry" (but then, that phrase insults the two most important
components of French culture :).

The (South) Korean government has several times unsuccessfully tried
to eliminate Hanja (kanji) (I was told by Korean students and my
linguist friend), and the PRC has successfully (with the use of more
force) enforced the introduction of simplified Hanzi.  Sudden changes
of scripts _are_ generally associated with political movements.

So "Japanese input methods" could theoretically, in a really warped
future history, be a life and death matter, sad to say.  (I must admit
to not editing out the word "Japanese" intentionally, we had one of
those right-wing sound trucks in our neighborhood at 8am Sunday....)

And missionaries (often Christian) are hard at work today in many
lands around the world, creating pidgens and translating the
Scriptures into them.  I have been assured by a linguist friend that
there is a list of now-dead languages destroyed by this process.  I
could ask her for the list if anyone wants proof.  I don't question
the missionaries' motives (although my friend does).  I merely wish to
note that preserving existing languages is not very high on their
priority list, and that altering the existing culture in a fundamental
way is number one.

Flexible input methods can help.  Maybe :-/

>>>>> "Craig" == Olinsky, Craig <olinskyc@example.com> writes:

    Craig> 	However, notice that there are proposals to get these
    Craig> scripts -- Hieroglyphics, Cuneiform, etc., into Unicode.
    Craig> Even if we _were_ able to suddenly stop using Kanji today,
    Craig> there would still be a "historical need" to use them on
    Craig> computers, so there would still need to be work on support,
    Craig> input methods, etc.  You're just slightly changing the
    Craig> audience who needs to use this software.

The change in the _size_ of the audience would not be insignificant.
It would be many orders of magnitude (log 10^9/10^4 = 5, at a guess).

This is very important, because it also applies to my insistence on
truly multilingual input methods that handle national languages, not
the notional things that can be encoded in pure Unicode.  I don't
object to UCS or even Unicode, as the underlying encoding, if properly
augmented.  (In fact, I think it is the only sensible way to go that
has been already implemented; I would have a hard time saying "no" to
2 billion Chinese if they implemented a "UCS" with the Hanzi starting
at zero in their traditional order.  Not destroying Unix's traditional
ASCII compatibility would be nice though ;-) I do insist that people
be offered multilingual methods that do not cost any extra
inconvenience over national language methods, and I do want to make
true multilingual text processing as simple as possible in order to
encourage mixing languages in documents.

I guess that people like Matt and Gaspar would put it differently, but 
we're not so far apart.  We just disagree on the best way to get to an 
implementation, and maybe on the relative importance of the several
goals we hold in common.

However, in terms of the current "customer base", it's a small need,
not many times bigger than the class of Classical Scholars who need
Cuneiform etc (and substantially overlapping that group, obviously).

My motivations are political and oriented towards what I see as a
desirable change.  I would prefer a few years' delay if we can get
something that "drops in" to existing systems using Canna or Kotoeri,
while providing true multilingual extensions with convenience of use,
to something half-baked, a "dancing bear" to be admired because it
dances, while people continue to use a system that _only_ provides
Japanese/Canna for their real work.

Gotta get my tax return to the post office (and have my wife sign it
first), so if I said anything horrible ... flame me later.

Steve

--------------------------------------------------------------
Next Nomikai: 17 July, 19:30 Tengu TokyoEkiMae 03-3275-3691
Next Meeting: 8 August, Tokyo Station Yaesu central gate 12:30
*** 20 June: TLUG will be at the Tokyo Linux Fair
http://tlug.linux.or.jp/projects/linux-fair/fair.html
--------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsor: PHT, makers of TurboLinux http://www.pht.co.jp