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Computing did pretty well in the prior 50 years.

by tiahura 2y ago

pjc50 2y ago
That's not an answer. Be specific. How do you want to represent the 97k CJK characters?
- vman81 2y ago
  I really don't want to be snarky or sarcastic, so I'll just be plain. Many people are unwilling or unable to understand a problem that doesn't affect them directly. Like - "UTF is woke" kind of people. They are out there.
CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
Not for the majority of the world population who doesn't know English
jcranmer 2y ago
I still remember the days when I couldn't use π and é in the same document, because there was no codepage that contained both of them. I also remember the days when pretty much any website that had non-English text had to have instructions on it for how to view it properly, because mojibake was so bloody common. (It should also tell you something that not only is there a name for "computers failed at charsets", but the name is Japanese.)
School-Cotton 2y ago
Only if you could expect a given person to only ever deal with one language. Anything international sucked and was a much bigger pain than now. It would be impossible to e.g. build a site like Reddit where people can comment in any language.
vman81 2y ago
Computing has improved massively over the last 50 years, not least because it now can accommodate peoples diverse languages.
kryptiskt 2y ago
No, it didn't. There were all kinds of encodings out there, and dealing with code pages was way worse than any inconveniences that Unicode has brought. Unicode was created for a reason, not just to torture US programmers with the diversity of scripts in the world. Maybe it was nice if you worked for a US company without any operations abroad, which includes absolutely none of those which mattered.
- account42 2y ago
  You still need to deal with "codepages" to differentiate between Japanese Unicode and Chinese Unicode even if it's called a language and not codepage now.
  - CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
    Han unification sucks indeed but if you get the wrong font it's still readable
    - numpad0 2y ago
      Sometimes, not always. Depends on how similar specific characters happen to be.
dotancohen 2y ago
Only if your name isn't 東久邇宮稔彦王.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
throw0101a 2y ago
> Computing did pretty well in the prior 50 years. Contra: * https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25812790/wrong-characters-in-some-e-mail-clients https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25812790/wrong-character...
Muromec 2y ago
I had to, in the year of our lord 2024, deal with a certain non-unicode system that ate one specific Cyrillic symbol when producing an open data artifact mandated by law. It was never fun then and it's still manages to create problems.

Computing did pretty well in the prior 50 years.

pjc50 2y ago

That's not an answer. Be specific. How do you want to represent the 97k CJK characters?

vman81 2y ago
I really don't want to be snarky or sarcastic, so I'll just be plain. Many people are unwilling or unable to understand a problem that doesn't affect them directly. Like - "UTF is woke" kind of people. They are out there.

CorrectHorseBat 2y ago

Not for the majority of the world population who doesn't know English

jcranmer 2y ago

I still remember the days when I couldn't use π and é in the same document, because there was no codepage that contained both of them. I also remember the days when pretty much any website that had non-English text had to have instructions on it for how to view it properly, because mojibake was so bloody common. (It should also tell you something that not only is there a name for "computers failed at charsets", but the name is Japanese.)

School-Cotton 2y ago

Only if you could expect a given person to only ever deal with one language. Anything international sucked and was a much bigger pain than now. It would be impossible to e.g. build a site like Reddit where people can comment in any language.

vman81 2y ago

Computing has improved massively over the last 50 years, not least because it now can accommodate peoples diverse languages.

kryptiskt 2y ago

No, it didn't. There were all kinds of encodings out there, and dealing with code pages was way worse than any inconveniences that Unicode has brought. Unicode was created for a reason, not just to torture US programmers with the diversity of scripts in the world. Maybe it was nice if you worked for a US company without any operations abroad, which includes absolutely none of those which mattered.

account42 2y ago
You still need to deal with "codepages" to differentiate between Japanese Unicode and Chinese Unicode even if it's called a language and not codepage now.
- CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
  Han unification sucks indeed but if you get the wrong font it's still readable
  - numpad0 2y ago
    Sometimes, not always. Depends on how similar specific characters happen to be.

dotancohen 2y ago

Only if your name isn't 東久邇宮稔彦王.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

throw0101a 2y ago

> Computing did pretty well in the prior 50 years. Contra: * https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25812790/wrong-characters-in-some-e-mail-clients https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25812790/wrong-character...

Muromec 2y ago

I had to, in the year of our lord 2024, deal with a certain non-unicode system that ate one specific Cyrillic symbol when producing an open data artifact mandated by law. It was never fun then and it's still manages to create problems.