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Perhaps it looks like it works "almost perfectly" because you're only using English (and similar western languages)? the problems that arise in Asian text are n

Perhaps it looks like it works "almost perfectly" because you're only using English (and similar western languages)? the problems that arise in Asian text are numerous -- and they do frequently hit end users.

formerly_proven 6y ago
Historically computing has been the backbone of bureaucracies for a very long time and as bureaucracies do, they make people bend to their rules, and thus the rules of computing. I'm German, the German alphabet is exactly the same as the English one, except we have four extra letters: äöü, the friendly Umlauts, and ß. Since a lot of older computing systems does not handle this (7-bit ASCII or mainframe character sets), computing bent the language instead. Jägerstraße => Jaegerstrasse. A lot of unixish software doesn't handle spaces in names and such. People bowed to that as well. The idea that computers should support cultures, and not the other way around, is pretty recent.
- brazzy 6y ago
  > computing bent the language instead. Jägerstraße => Jaegerstrasse. Um, no. The words were originally written that way. Ä, ö, ü and ß actually developed from ligatures for ae, oe, ue and ss, long before computers were a thing.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    What's your point exactly? Umlauts as we know them have been used for a few hundred years (hard to pin-point, because öäü evolved in "casual" hand-writing, not printing or books) before computing came along, so were clearly how the language worked before. The motive force for using AE and SS in computing was clearly that computers commonly didn't support it, not because people thought suddenly writing like this again a couple hundred years later would be fun.
  - canjobear 6y ago
    Originally ß was just a ligature for ss (ſs) but it since developed its own meaning. ß indicates that the preceding vowel is long. Busse and Buße are pronounced differently and mean different things. The conversion ß -> ss destroys information that was present in the original orthography.
- dtech 6y ago
  I'm not German, but afaik the spelling reform of 1996 that introduced ss as an always-alternative for ß was mainly aimed at simplification and unification. Do you have any support for your statement that it was because of insufficient support by IT systems?
  - stkdump 6y ago
    Such an always-alternative doesn't exist. ß was changed to ss at the end of short syllables, that is all. I think there is a rule to always use ss instead of ß (and ae instead of ä, etc.), when ß is not available. But that wasn't introduced in 1996, that is way older and less relevant today than it used to be. Gruß, stkdump

formerly_proven 6y ago

Historically computing has been the backbone of bureaucracies for a very long time and as bureaucracies do, they make people bend to their rules, and thus the rules of computing. I'm German, the German alphabet is exactly the same as the English one, except we have four extra letters: äöü, the friendly Umlauts, and ß. Since a lot of older computing systems does not handle this (7-bit ASCII or mainframe character sets), computing bent the language instead. Jägerstraße => Jaegerstrasse. A lot of unixish software doesn't handle spaces in names and such. People bowed to that as well. The idea that computers should support cultures, and not the other way around, is pretty recent.

brazzy 6y ago
> computing bent the language instead. Jägerstraße => Jaegerstrasse. Um, no. The words were originally written that way. Ä, ö, ü and ß actually developed from ligatures for ae, oe, ue and ss, long before computers were a thing.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  What's your point exactly? Umlauts as we know them have been used for a few hundred years (hard to pin-point, because öäü evolved in "casual" hand-writing, not printing or books) before computing came along, so were clearly how the language worked before. The motive force for using AE and SS in computing was clearly that computers commonly didn't support it, not because people thought suddenly writing like this again a couple hundred years later would be fun.
- canjobear 6y ago
  Originally ß was just a ligature for ss (ſs) but it since developed its own meaning. ß indicates that the preceding vowel is long. Busse and Buße are pronounced differently and mean different things. The conversion ß -> ss destroys information that was present in the original orthography.
dtech 6y ago
I'm not German, but afaik the spelling reform of 1996 that introduced ss as an always-alternative for ß was mainly aimed at simplification and unification. Do you have any support for your statement that it was because of insufficient support by IT systems?
- stkdump 6y ago
  Such an always-alternative doesn't exist. ß was changed to ss at the end of short syllables, that is all. I think there is a rule to always use ss instead of ß (and ae instead of ä, etc.), when ß is not available. But that wasn't introduced in 1996, that is way older and less relevant today than it used to be. Gruß, stkdump