At 01:07 PM 7/14/2003 -0400, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>Agreed that the indexing is important...and keep in mind that the indexes
>themselves must be indexed once they reach a certain size or complexity!
>This, however, is where digital developments are important...since this can
>be done much more easily by computers. In my view, the indexing should be
>done in some sort of simple format, that is NOT program-dependent (I think
>it is probably a safe assumption that the 128 characters we know as ASCII
>will be a standard core component of digitalia as long as THAT exists!)
ASCII is unwise. Diacriticals are necessary in my opinion and since only
the lower 128 characters are common to ANSI and ASCII, translation becomes
necessary even for modern platforms. I use HTML 1.0 for all such work; it
can be tedious, but it is a format which is unlikely to die and which is
fully cross-platform today.
Of course, in practice HTML is ASCII - it is written in only those lower
128 characters - but it does require interpretation. Fortunately, the
interpreter to any other language is straightforward. Note that there are
still painful restrictions since HTML 1.0 does not have all the
diacriticals in common use in languages of interest. The $#nnn; structure
does depend on the user's language.
Mike
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http://www.mrichter.com/
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