Re: vote...
Saul Epstein 
Thu, 9 Jul 1998 10:21:17 -0500

Quotes from: Dr Maggie Hellstrom, Lund
<HELLSTROEM*harris,kosufy,lu,se>
Date: Thursday, July 9, 1998 3:44 AM

> I don't think I'm the only Vulcanophile who uses an old computer
> system for much of my work, and many of these systems cannot even
deal
> with more than 7-bit ANSIcharacter encoding. That means that most
accented
> letters are substituted by other characters, making for a lot of
> confusion.
>
> I'm thus afraid that an already quite tricky task (reading,
interpreting
> and understanding a Vulcan text) would become quite insurmountable
because
> of machine-related problems, should a notation/transcription system
using 
> 8-bit characters be implemented.

Ultimately, our collaboration depends almost exlusively on Internet
mail correspondance, and the numbers, 26 base letters, and certain
punctuation shared by most of the world's operating systems and
transmission protocols are all we have to work with here. So what we
settle on must be capable of representation in that context, for the
very reasons you point out.

I personally think that what we settle on should also be capable of
using a _few_ special characters in other contexts, because I think
the results are more legible and, frankly, more elegant. Unless
having a system that uses a _few_ special characters when it can and
doesn't when it can't would be too confusing.

(I don't like being confused any more than anyone else, but I'm
understandably in the dark as to what other people will be confused
by when it comes to transcription. By emphasizing "few," I don't mean
to suggest that a lot of special characters isn't legitimate cause
for confusion but to recognize that it is legitimate cause. I don't
think we should use more than handful of them under any
circumstances.)

--
from Saul Epstein
locus*planetkc,com - www,planetkc,com/locus
"Surakri' ow'phatsur the's'hi the's'tca'; the's'pharka the's'hi
     suraketca'."
                                        -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at