Re: tlug: Japanese filenames (was: EUC & SJIS)

[Rex Walters <rex@example.com>]

On Thu, Sep 10, 1998 at 01:29:13PM +0000, Karl-Max Wagner wrote:
> 
> Let's face it. English is a de facto standard in everything that
> smacks technology. We can be sure that everybody using computers
> has a good working knowledge of it. Just imagine somebody would
> start with Kanji filenames on a Japanese server and a Frechman
> wants to download a file. Well, he could as well buy himself a
> rope. From the experience in  Eurpoe I can only say: hands off
> anything that has a regional / national touch for thing that
> aren't stricly limited to a region / nation. Global networking
> is making ever growing inroads - and consequently English, too.
> Like it or hate it - that's the facts. Life is a lot easier
> internationally with a common language.

Let's face it, you should always type "c:\" before a pathname and
enforce 8.3 filenames like "wkrpt98z.foo" to ensure you can transfer
your files everywhere.  And why *did* we give up on hex keypads or
toggle switches, punch cards, paper tape readers, etc.?

I'm being facetious, of course.  I fully understand your point.  Global
communications is something new, and by definition requires some level
of commonality.

If my goal was to make a file accessible worldwide, I would certainly
use a 7 bit ASCII filename.  

That is a very different thing, however, from telling people that they
shouldn't create filenames in their own language.  (Wait a minute, my
native language is English -- am I really having this argument with you?  :-)

Besides, things change.  The Lingua Franca (sp?) for people reading
technical documentation 50 years ago was German, for Politicians at
various times it has arguably been French, centuries ago it was Latin.
In another hundred years or three, who's to say if English will still be
the common language?

Permitting as recent an invention as the computer to modify the way we speak
and write to one another is as offensive to me as, say, forcing everyone
in the world to sit in those horrid knee-chairs (or whatever those stupid
contraptions that were mildly popular a few years ago were called)
because they are easier to make!  Computers work for us, not the other
way around.

I agree that, practically, one must often bow to the lowest common
denominator.  Philisophically, however, I despise kowtowing to software
and hardware state-of-the-art.  

Finally, it is interesting comparing Europe and Asia in this context
(I'm no linguist or historian, my geography is abominable even by
American standards, and it's late, so bear with me).  Asian and
middle-eastern countries tend to be separated by large bodies of water, 
and have wildly differing languages and character issues (pictographic
languages, right-to-left -vs- left-to-right, context-sensitive
characters, etc.).  

European countries tend to border one another (with interesting little
diversions when one country tries to re-define a border :-) and for the
most part speak languages derived from the Angles or the Saxons.  

I mention all this because I contend that it is a greater imposition to
your average Japanese (say) to force him to use English filenames than
it is to your average German (though I find it abhorrent for either).

"Proving" the same point from the other direction: if you put me in
front of a German keyboard, I'll mistype a few "Z"s.  Put me in front of
a Japanese keyboard (which is really an "Roman" keyboard for
phoneticizing Japanese -- but that's beside the point) and I start
climbing the walls (extra keys, misplaced keys, resized keys, AARGH!).

Geez.  I've lost my own train of thought.

Time to go to bed.

Cheers,
-- 
Rex
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