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I stopped taking this post seriously after I read this: > Further east we hit ideographics. The concept of a "letter" has just flew out of the occidental windo

I stopped taking this post seriously after I read this: > Further east we hit ideographics. The concept of a "letter" has just flew out of the occidental window. Not only that but the text is laid out top to bottom. Chinese and Japanese are both read from left to right (although in the past characters were written top to bottom and right to left). The only language that I know of that is presently laid out from top to bottom is Mongolian. I'll be damned if I ever need to write software for people in Mongolia.

jws 17y ago
Is it too much to ask the Mongolians to turn their monitors 90 degrees clockwise and look at them in a mirror?
lucumo 17y ago
Wikipedia doesn't entirely agree with you: "Both horizontal and vertical writing are used in Japan, as well as in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan where the Traditional Chinese orthography is used. Traditional Chinese is also used in mainland China in a few limited contexts, such as some books on ancient literature, or as an aesthetic choice for some signs on shops, temples, etc. In those contexts, both horizontal and vertical writing are used as well. Vertical writing is commonly used for novels, newspapers, comics, and many other forms of writing. Because it goes downwards, vertical writing is invariably used on the spines of books. Some newspapers combine the two forms, using the vertical format for most articles but including some written horizontally, especially for headlines. Musical notation for some Japanese instruments such as the shakuhachi is written vertically." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing_in_East_Asian_scripts#Japanese_and_Traditional_Chinese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing... But I agree that you don't really have to worry about that. Just as we're lucky not to have to worry about this monstrosity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
- theli0nheart 17y ago
  That is horrific. Yes, you pointed out some relevant points, notably that vertical writing is still used in some contexts. However, it's a fact that Mandarin and Japanese are predominantly left to right on the web and on computers, which is what the original post was referring to. PS The vertical writing on book spines is a life saver.
  - lucumo 17y ago
    > That is horrific. Yes, just thinking about having to worry about boustrophedon makes my head hurt. But apparently it's faster to read, so it's not all bad ;-) > PS The vertical writing on book spines is a life saver. I can imagine. The constant twisted neck when searching for books in a library can't be healthy...
xiaoma 17y ago
The Chinese newspaper I usually read is top to bottom, left to right. So are the vast majority of the other newspapers and magazines on the rack, the last piece of fiction I bought and my book on go. I also encounter a good number of MS word documents, including contracts printed that way. That said, top to bottom is just too much of a pain to deal with on the web until CSS supports it.
- theli0nheart 17y ago
  Sure, there are some, but vast majority? That's stretching it, a lot, unless you're in the historical section of a bookstore. This is my experience in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai.
  - xiaoma 17y ago
    I'm neither stretching it nor hanging out in the historical section of bookstores. I live in Taipei. Not having gone through the cultural revolution, character simplification and various other imposed measures, top-down writing is much, much more common in Taiwan, and HK. The same is true to a lesser degree in Japan.
potatolicious 17y ago
For me it was: > Oh, and there are languages with unbounded sets of "characters" such as Chinese which literally cannot be fully described in Unicode. I read Chinese just fine in Unicode. Is there something I'm missing? You have 50,000 commonly used characters, 100,000 rare ones - this certainly doesn't bust any limitations within unicode. Makes fonts rather large, but that's another issue altogether. The rest of the article seems to be confused about what unicode is - I don't think anybody seriously goes into unicode expecting it to practically translate for them. It's an encoding, that's it. It won't convert "," to "." depending on locale, it certainly won't rephrase your messages for you to be sensitive to local cultures. That's your responsibility, not the purview of a form of encoding. I think the author's point at the end was: "Unicode" as a concept won't localize your programs for you. Well, duh?
- lucumo 17y ago
  > I think the author's point at the end was: "Unicode" as a concept won't localize your programs for you. Well, duh? That's his point as I understand it. But I disagree with the "duh" part. It's rare to see software that goes beyond simple translation.

jws 17y ago

Is it too much to ask the Mongolians to turn their monitors 90 degrees clockwise and look at them in a mirror?

lucumo 17y ago

Wikipedia doesn't entirely agree with you: "Both horizontal and vertical writing are used in Japan, as well as in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan where the Traditional Chinese orthography is used. Traditional Chinese is also used in mainland China in a few limited contexts, such as some books on ancient literature, or as an aesthetic choice for some signs on shops, temples, etc. In those contexts, both horizontal and vertical writing are used as well. Vertical writing is commonly used for novels, newspapers, comics, and many other forms of writing. Because it goes downwards, vertical writing is invariably used on the spines of books. Some newspapers combine the two forms, using the vertical format for most articles but including some written horizontally, especially for headlines. Musical notation for some Japanese instruments such as the shakuhachi is written vertically." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing_in_East_Asian_scripts#Japanese_and_Traditional_Chinese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing... But I agree that you don't really have to worry about that. Just as we're lucky not to have to worry about this monstrosity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

theli0nheart 17y ago
That is horrific. Yes, you pointed out some relevant points, notably that vertical writing is still used in some contexts. However, it's a fact that Mandarin and Japanese are predominantly left to right on the web and on computers, which is what the original post was referring to. PS The vertical writing on book spines is a life saver.
- lucumo 17y ago
  > That is horrific. Yes, just thinking about having to worry about boustrophedon makes my head hurt. But apparently it's faster to read, so it's not all bad ;-) > PS The vertical writing on book spines is a life saver. I can imagine. The constant twisted neck when searching for books in a library can't be healthy...

xiaoma 17y ago

The Chinese newspaper I usually read is top to bottom, left to right. So are the vast majority of the other newspapers and magazines on the rack, the last piece of fiction I bought and my book on go. I also encounter a good number of MS word documents, including contracts printed that way. That said, top to bottom is just too much of a pain to deal with on the web until CSS supports it.

theli0nheart 17y ago
Sure, there are some, but vast majority? That's stretching it, a lot, unless you're in the historical section of a bookstore. This is my experience in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai.
- xiaoma 17y ago
  I'm neither stretching it nor hanging out in the historical section of bookstores. I live in Taipei. Not having gone through the cultural revolution, character simplification and various other imposed measures, top-down writing is much, much more common in Taiwan, and HK. The same is true to a lesser degree in Japan.

potatolicious 17y ago

For me it was: > Oh, and there are languages with unbounded sets of "characters" such as Chinese which literally cannot be fully described in Unicode. I read Chinese just fine in Unicode. Is there something I'm missing? You have 50,000 commonly used characters, 100,000 rare ones - this certainly doesn't bust any limitations within unicode. Makes fonts rather large, but that's another issue altogether. The rest of the article seems to be confused about what unicode is - I don't think anybody seriously goes into unicode expecting it to practically translate for them. It's an encoding, that's it. It won't convert "," to "." depending on locale, it certainly won't rephrase your messages for you to be sensitive to local cultures. That's your responsibility, not the purview of a form of encoding. I think the author's point at the end was: "Unicode" as a concept won't localize your programs for you. Well, duh?

lucumo 17y ago
> I think the author's point at the end was: "Unicode" as a concept won't localize your programs for you. Well, duh? That's his point as I understand it. But I disagree with the "duh" part. It's rare to see software that goes beyond simple translation.