Re: language names

[Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@surfchem0.riken.go.jp>]

Hi,

From: "James A. Treacy" <treacy@debian.org>
Subject: Re: language names
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 02:39:29 -0500

> > 'NIHONGO' and 'RUSSKII' are 'Japanese' and 'Russian' in their language
> > in ASCII characters.
> > 
> Since the language is already represented in the native charset, should
> the ascii versions also be in the native language or another, like
> English?

In native languages.  Because:

(1) Native charset which are different from the main body of the web page
    are not properly displayed at all now because of '<META 
    http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=*******">'.
    However, this META line should not be removed.
(2) Though "numeric character reference" will improve this situation for
    web browsers which support it (ex. M12 or IE5), a certain part of 
    people who don't use these browsers will remain unhappy.

Thus the ASCII versions are for people whose native languages are,
for example, Japanese or Russian but cannot read native characters
written in, for example, 'http://www.debian.org/index.html.en'.

If a language doesn't have an ASCII expression like 'NIHONGO', this has
to be written in English.  This is a compromise.  A user has to consult a
dictionary.  However, (s)he CAN consult a dictionary.  (S)he cannot 
consult a dictionary for, for example, 'o with grave, O with tilde,
O with acute, O with acute, E with umlaut, E with acute, E with circumflex'.
This is a ISO-8859-1 representation of 'Russian' written in KOI8-R.



PS.  I don't know 'RUSSKII' is correct or not.

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@debian.or.jp>