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> Even many of the European languages that can fit in 8 bits have things like accented characters that complicates things somewhat. I don't see your point here
by meepmorp 13y ago
> Even many of the European languages that can fit in 8 bits have things like accented characters that complicates things somewhat.
I don't see your point here, with respect to English orthography making computer implementation easier. How exactly does not needing representations for accented characters make anything easier?
- ianbicking 13y agoIf it was just some additional characters like ñ (which is considered a letter of its own, not an accented n) then it wouldn't be a big deal – but e and é are the same letter with different accents, which adds some subtlety that English simply doesn't have. Given a small enough number of accented characters you can punt on that, call them each a character, but English is objectively simpler since the only real distinction it has between letters is caps or not-caps. (I was just watching the Mother Of All Demos, though, and everything was in caps but they put an overline over capital letters. So even normal English lettering was too complicated for a while.)
- Groxx 13y agoIt has fewer characters (don't need one for each accent, possibly exceeding 8 bits otherwise) and/or no variable width characters. Also capitalization rules are trivial. Not that I'm claiming English is unique here, just convenient, and many languages can't claim that.