[LINK] Dot Asia a good idea?

[Kim Holburn]

On 2007/Oct/09, at 1:52 PM, Roger Clarke wrote:

> Ooh great, a nicely esoteric discussion of the kind we used to have!
>
> At 5:40 -0500 9/10/07, Kim Davies wrote:
>> They are the terms 'test' translated in Chinese (represented in
>> Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese respectively). There are
>> actually eleven such domains:
>>
>>     .≈Œ »«-  (Arabic)
>>     .¬"«?'? (Persian)
>>     .≤‚ ' (Simplified Chinese)		<<===
>>     .ë™éé (Traditional Chinese)	<<===
>>     .ËÒÔ˚Ú‡ÌË (Russian)		<<===
>>     .»œ‹≥Ë÷⁄ (Hindi)
>>     .ɬÉÕÉ»É«É ‹ (Greek)		<<===
>>     .≈◊Ω∫∆Æ (Korean)
>>     .ËÚÒË (Yiddish)			<<===
>>     .ÉeÉXÉg (Japanese)			<<===
>>     .??????? (Tamil)
>
> Orright youse cogniscenti -
>
>
> Challenge #1:  how many of you can declare that you saw all of the  
> above rendered in the appropriate glyphs??
>
> Eudora works interestingly.

In Kim's original email they all worked fine for me.  Apple Mail is  
good for something then.  You have to have the fonts installed  
though.  Your email though appears to have munged them.  I would  
guess at the headers.

Kim's original email has these headers:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Yours has:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit


> I have HTML switched off, of course.  (Please let's *not* switch  
> that particular thread back on!).

The emails were text only.

> But it displayed 6 of the 11 scripts in what appeared to be  
> appropriate form - identified above with <<===
>
> When I do a Reply-To, it reverts them to ASCII equivalents.
>
>
> Challenge #2 - explain in terms that educated mortals can  
> understand why they display as they do above, i.e. rendered in 8- 
> bit ASCII.
>
> The one that particularly interests me is the Tamil.

I wouldn't mind understanding this too.  I do understand parts of  
it.  But for instance when I copy and paste say Chinese simplified  
into this email, the text I pasted in works OK but it doesn't fix the  
text that Roger's email left munged.  Why is that?

In fact here is the original which looks fine to me


     .إختبار  (Arabic)
     .آزمایشی (Persian)
     .测试 (Simplified Chinese)
     .測試 (Traditional Chinese)
     .испытание (Russian)
     .परीक्षा (Hindi)
     .δοκιμή (Greek)
     .테스트 (Korean)
     .טעסט (Yiddish)
     .テスト (Japanese)
     .பரிட்சை (Tamil)

Hmmm... my system seems to have screwed something about the left to  
right order on the semitic scripts and something is wrong with the  
arabic.  I think the arabic is wrong in Kim's original email.  The  
version I just pasted in looks more like arabic to me.  Here are  
screen shots:

Original:
<http://picasaweb.google.com/kim.holburn/Script/photo? 
authkey=nQ5dHki08es#5119324367698573474>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/yrvbxr>

When I copy and paste:
<http://picasaweb.google.com/kim.holburn/Script/photo? 
authkey=nQ5dHki08es#5119324380583475394>
Warning links to google:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yuczv5

> But the alphabetic scripts also surprise me, because they include  
> repeats.
>
> (I'm less surprised by the repeats within the logographic scripts,  
> i.e. the 4 East Asian ones.  That's because those 4 use a 16-bit  
> space*, which I understood had space left.  Hence, when interpreted  
> in 8-bit space, they may have repeating higher-order chars - in the  
> case of Japanese, it's what I'd informally describe as <capital-e- 
> acute>).
>
>
> *  *But* I'm mindful of this post:
> Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 16:39:52 +1000
> From: "Christopher Vance" <cjsvance at gmail.com>
>> Unicode / ISO10646 is a 21-bit character set.   Not everything  
>> Chinese
> fits into 16.
>
> That stuffs up the understanding that I thought I'd developed about  
> Unicode.  I have to investigate it in a hurry, because one of the  
> seminars I'm doing at Uni Hong Kong in the next fortnight is on  
> character representation, and if Chris is right, one of my slides  
> is w-r-o-n-g.
>
>
> -- 
> Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/ 
> Roger.Clarke/
>
> Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611  
> AUSTRALIA
>                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
> mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http:// 
> www.xamax.com.au/
>
> Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National  
> University
> Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong  
> Kong
> Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni  
> of NSW
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--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request

Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny.
                           -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Analog, Apr 1961