Re: A state of spin ... presented in ASCII

On 3/19/2010 1:06 PM, Masataka Ohta wrote:
> SM wrote:
>
> > > The IAB made a clear statement that we need i18n support, yet over a
> > > decade after RFC 2130 or RFC 2825, the RFCs themselves still have a
> > > strict ASCII limitation. Sure, that wasn't mentioned at the time, but
> > > does nobody else find this plain shameful?
> > As seen in an I-D:
> >
> >   "The IETF is an international organization with open participation.
> >    It is important that the IETF leadership be a reflection of the
> >    diversity of its participants."
> It merely means IETF documents MUST BE internationally legible,
> that is, pure ASCII.
No, it means that they must be internationally available. And since many
people DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH mandating them to be in English eliminates
those party's participation.

The idea that Knowledge Representation must occur in English means those
that speak it poorly, and many others fail to reach the people who are
part of the constituency and as such they fall short of the IETF's
capabilities to deliver. They also may actually become victims of the
language barrier


> People, in practice, are fully aware about that, which is why
> people, including *YOU*, are communicating through pure ASCII
> e-mail in international forums such as IETF,
no - they are communicating through English ASCII email because they are
forced to.


> except that some people tend to think non-ASCII may be used for minor 
> purposese
> such as metadata (mail header) of personal name.
And for really stupid things like diagrams which are so critical to have
in all technology briefs and that those briefs made out of ASCII
characters alone have really bad diagrams generally...

> But, even such people using non-ASCII personal names can't use
> non-ASCII for more serious purposes such as mail addresses, if
> they want to receive mails internationally.
>
>                                               Masataka Ohta
>
> PS
>
> My children know ASCII characters not by birth but by education in
> an elementary school, which, I think, is a reasonable effort for
> internationalization from our side.
Uh, which alphabet - Hirigana, Kana, Kanji or... Romanji? you see what I
mean I hope.

 By home education, they can
> input ASCII and Japanese characters using ASCII key boards. That
> is, they can send mails to international recipients if mail addresses
> are pure ASCII. But teaching them Greek is too much.
>
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