Re: [idn] Comments on protocol drafts

[C C Magnus Gustavsson <mag@lysator.liu.se>]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, RJ Atkinson wrote:

> I don't think so.  The written form of Chinese has existed
> for a VERY long time.  Printing was invented and first commonly
> used in China.

What does that have to do with the number of people who use it?

> Lets please move past this, but lets also remember that native
> users of Asian languages dwarf native users of European
> languages

No. The Indoeuropean language family represent a MAJORITY of the
world. We're talking about scripts here though and Latin script is the
most common (although not used by a majority of the world).

Sure, if you count people on the Asian continent they most certainly
dwarf the population of the European continent but that has nothing to
do with languages or scripts. A lot of languages in Asia (i e all the
Indic ones) have more in common with English than with Mandarin, and
European languages are widely spead outside of Europe.

(Alright, I agree that "European languages" is a bit inexact. What I
refer to is Western Indoeuropean languages, that is mainly Germanic,
Italic and Slavic, using Latin alphabets. The other languages spoken
in Europe, that is Finno-Ugrian languages and Basque, are small enough
to disregard from. Less than 20 million native speakers.)

> and try to find a language neutral (rather than merely
> European) approach to this issue.

Of course! AFAIK noone has argued differently.

However, I don't know what's important to others. Thus I contribute
with what's important to me and count on everyone else to do the same.
My demands are not intended to be the only demands, just some of the
demands. I think and hope that we can find a solution that everybody
will be happy with.

In this case I was simply arguing against Hoffmans insinuation that
European languages are not very important.

/Magnus