Re: What am I missing without mutt?
On 07/02/2008, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
> >> > However, I vehemently disagree that email should be ascii. This is
> >>
> >> But that's how the US maintains it's hegemony over the Internet...
> >>
> >> Well, that and the fact that (compared to "calligraphic",
> >> pictographic & hieroglyphic languages) Greco-Latin alphabets are
> >> small, simple, regularized, easy to print, and a perfect basis for
> >> extensible vocabulary.
> >
> > Greek is not in ASCII,
>
> Never said it was.
>
> > and Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and all the
>
>
> Russian derives from Greek.
Russian is Cyrillic, which is in fact of Greek and Hebrew origin. Not
surprising since it was invented to spread Christianity, and those are
the languages of the Original and New Testaments.
> Note that I specified Greco-Latin.
Greco refers to Greek, no? Or is there some Greek speaking culture
that uses Latin letters? I've never heard of them.
> > European languages that have modified Latin scripts are just as small
> > (Hebrew is smaller), simple (Arabic is simpler), regularized (if you
> > mean that there is only a small, repeating set of symbols), easy to
> > print (unless you have a ball-hammer printer), and are perfect basi
> > (sp?) for extensible vocabulary.
>
> With the semitic languages, the problem I see is that one letter can
> "flow" under another letter, and dots here and there change the
> meaning of the letter.
>
In Arabic, most letters combinations flow into one another as does
cursive script in Russian and English. There are still the same amount
of letters, in fact, when typing Arabic one does not pay attention to
the way the letters flow into one another. The OS does that part
automatically assuming that a supportive font is installed. Hebrew, on
the other hand, has final letters that are used only on the end of
words, like capital letters in English at the beginning of sentences.
And like English capitals, the user must specify that [s]he wants a
final letter with the appropriate key. Being how there are only five
of those (in addition to 22 regular Hebrew letters) the alphabet the
becomes 27 letters: only one more than English.
Dotan Cohen
http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
Reply to: