Text-mode apps (Was :Who are the "spacists"?)

[Mikhail V]

On 30 March 2017 at 16:14, Steve D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 03:21 pm, Rick Johnson wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, March 26, 2017 at 2:53:49 PM UTC-5, Chris Angelico wrote:
>>> On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 6:25 AM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > On 26 March 2017 at 20:10, Steve D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info>
>>> > wrote:

>>> [ ] Uses no diacritical marks
>>
>> Why is it my responsibiliy to encode my text with
>> pronuciation tutorials? Are we adults here or what?
>
> Now you're just being absurd. Supporting diacritics doesn't mean you are
> responsible for teaching your users what they're for. They already know.
> That's why they want to use them.
>
> Diacritics are for:
>
> - distinguishing between words which look the same, but have
>   different pronunciation;
>
> - distinguishing between different letters of the alphabet, like
>   dotted-i and dotless-ı (or ı and ı-with-a-dot, if you prefer),
>   or a and å;
>
> - distinguishing between words which look and sound the same but
>   mean something different;
>
> - and making band names look ǨØØĻ and annoy old fuddy-duddies.
>

Steve, it is not bad to want to spell your name using spelling which
was taught you in the school. But it is bad to stay in illusion that there
is something good in using accents. As said it _is_ selfish to force
people to use e.g. umlauts and noun Capitalisations in German.
It is an big obstacle for reading and burdle for typing.
Initially it has nothing to do with people's choice, it is politics only.
I can speak and write German fluently, so I know how much
better would it be without those odd spelling rules.

So don't mix the spoken language and writing system - spoken
language will never be extinct, but most writing systems will be obsolete
and should be obsolete (you can call me bigot again ;-)

Some other interesting aspects: if I localise a software in Russian
language and use Cyrillic letters, english speakers will not be able
to read _anything_, and if I'll use Latin letters instead, then
non-russian users
will be at least able to read something, so if you know some Russian
spoken language it will be much more help for you.

Concrete software example - lets say I make an IDE.
It is far more important to give the users mechanisms to customize
the glyphs (e.g. edit math signs) than supporting Unicode.
And therefore it is much more important to make those font
format definitions transparent, non-bloated and easily editable.
Where is it all?


Mikhail