Display and sorting for those users who do not have the Unicode capability.
So we can perhaps look forward to the end of romanization in our lifetimes,
but neither our systems nor our users are ready for it yet.

And here's another question: I know that Microsoft has a "soft keyboard"
that allows you to key various character sets on the screen. Is there
anything similar in the Linux world?

kc

At 11:45 AM 9/4/2002 -0400, Johan Zeeman wrote:
>Let me counter Karen's question with another one - what would be the
>rationale for continuing to include romanized data in MODS records?
>
>Joe Zeeman
>The Library Corporation
>
>i> -----Original Message-----
> > From: Metadata Object Description Schema List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
> > Behalf Of Karen Coyle
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 9:35 AM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: MODS, Unicode & 880's
> >
> >
> > I was looking at MODS for a place to put our 880 data, not that we have a
> > particular need at the moment but I'd been thinking about Unicode
> > and MARC,
> > and MODS came to me as a solution to some issues. The 880's are not
> > included in MODS. That could be because MODS is intended to be "simple",
> > but I suppose it could also be because it means a much more complex
> > character set translate from the escaped values for CJK to the
> > thousands of
> > Unicode values. In any case, it would work for me because my data is
> > already in Unicode so that translate is not an issue.
> >
> > It seems to me that there is a logical place for the alternate graphic
> > fields. For example title could be expanded from:
> >
> > <xsd:complexType name="titleInfoType">
> >                 <xsd:choice maxOccurs="unbounded">
> >                         <xsd:element name="title"/>
> >                         <xsd:element name="partNumber"/>
> >                         <xsd:element name="partName"/>
> >                         <xsd:element name="nonSort">
> >                                    ...
> >
> > to:
> >
> > <xsd:complexType name="titleInfoType">
> >                 <xsd:choice maxOccurs="unbounded">
> >                         <xsd:element name="title"/>
> >                         <xsd:element name="partNumber"/>
> >                         <xsd:element name="partName"/>
> >                         <xsd:element name="nonSort">
> >                                   <xsd:element name="alt_graphic"/>
> >                                   ...
> >
> > This would finally get us (IMO) what MARC does only awkwardly, which is
> > linking the alternate graphic with the field that it is parallel to. The
> > question would be whether we want to include a data element that
> > gives some
> > indication of the language or glyph set included but my impression is that
> > with Unicode most applications are not relying on this kind of data.
> >
> > Does anyone else see this as useful, and does anyone see any particular
> > reasons NOT to include this in MODS?
> >
> >
> > *********************************************
> > Karen Coyle           [log in to unmask]
> >
> >             http://www.kcoyle.net
> > **********************************************