some more multilingual usage (i):
IPA: Linguists, singers, speach therapists.
Adobe-Symbol (greek symbols): Scientists, Mathematicians.
Adobe-Sonata: Musicians.
Adobe-Carta: MapMakers.
Arabic, Greek, Hebrew: Biblical and other scholars.
I would hope that we could avoid the mistakes that Apple made when it made
user-selectable fonts available for the first time---The reserved range for font
numbering was woefully underestimated, and was soon exhausted by enthusiastic
users, forceing a cludged up new scheme. Luckily, the new scheme incorporates a
language tag, which forestalls other nightmares for would-be polylingual code.
The lesson here is to NEVER underestimate the hunger of the user.
Academics are a major componant of our traffic, and they have a constant need to
use polylingual communication, not all of which is representable with just a
Roman character set. That this has prompted make-do schemes is no excuse for us
to insist on propagating the need for same.
I dont think it is wise of us to to underestimate the pent-up demand for full
poly-lingual transmission.
--
dana s emery <de19(_at_)umail(_dot_)umd(_dot_)edu>