what if i proposed a "green" xml. transmitting bits requires energy. 
large character sets mean that you have to transmit more bits and thus 
use more energy and contribute to global warming. so in an effort to 
improve the green credentials of xml we should really try to get by on 
as few letters as possible. my suggestion would be a-z (you probably 
noticed my lack of interest in capitalisation), 0-9, some punctuation ., 
a few useful symbols <>&?[! and every culture (including latin 
languages) can adapt.

:)

oh, yeah - better add all the symbols needed for smileys - have to have 
priorities here.

rick

tedd wrote:

> William J. Kammerer said:
>
>> I can't comment on the usability of any alphabet other than Latin, but
>> is it "fair" that Chinese ideograms chew up tens of thousands of code
>> points in Unicode? All the while Latin only needs a few dozen even when
>> you throw in the accents and umlauts?
>
>
> Is it fair that we got first crack (the base) at the Unicode database? 
> Is it fair that the rest of the world has to deal with all the ASCII 
> characters that we English speaking countries have imposed on the 
> Internet? Is it fair that we got all the "best" (keyboard wise) dot 
> com names? Is it fair that we were so shortsighted that we used a 
> seven-bit word instead of an eight-bit to resolve characters -- and 
> now, as a result everyone must use nameprep and punnycode to translate 
> all those tens of thousands of Chinese ideograms to ASCII for resolution?
>
> Keep in mind,  that here are 260 TLDs. There are 7260 languages, some 
> of them having 2 or even 3 scripts. There are around 13000 dialects of 
> some importance (a language needs 100.000 people speaking it to 
> survive). E-colonization (dominance of an e-culture) should probably 
> lead to the initial deprecation of some languages, but recent history 
> shows a cultural resistance and resurgence after such a shock. So one 
> can consider that Internet will most probably help languages to 
> survive and develop: a 50,000 people minim might be a good rule of 
> thumb (think of trade, community idioms).
>
> So roughly one can consider that 50,000 languages with possible 260 
> variants (at TLD level) are to be considered. Obviously most of them 
> will try to use the same script as much as they can for the TLDs. But 
> this cannot be considered as systematic all throughout a language. So 
> one has to consider 10 millions possibilities most of them synonyms or 
> not implemented. I am just talking of the legacy: PADs may introduce 
> 10 times this.
>
> Now, considering all of this, when we (Latin users) first started the 
> Internet, we thought that seven bits could do it all -- what fairness 
> in the world was that?
>
> No, I think the rest of the world got the fuzzy end of this lolly-pop.
>
> tedd




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