On 10 Jan 2003 at 4:41, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 03:34:18AM +0100, youandme@poczta.fm wrote:
On 10 Jan 2003 at 0:03, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: If we wanted "every ancient broken browser", then we shouldn't use PNG, CSS, JavaScript, OGG, colors, and all things like that in articles, because there's always some ancient broken browser that doesn't support that. In fact all these are more likely to cause problems than UTF-8.
So the problem might be finding out what the standard for the browser in some parts of the world is and... write for the browser slightly below the standard. The policy "share your knowledge with the Wikipedia with all the high technology that we have" is what makes me thinking what this all Wikipedias are for...?
UTF-8 certainly qualifies.
IMHO UTF-8 at present _only_ qualifies (but is a must in the future), and OGG is still a matter of "tomorrow".
On Polish Wikipedia the policy is - if word is in Latin-based script, it should be spelled in Latin characters with all diactrics, and if it's not, original spelling (be it Cyrillic, Kanji or whatever else) should be given in article.
Mind you thou Tomasz, that there's no consensus on Polish Wikipedia on exeception: how to deal with words in Latin-based scripts which have popular or established Polish way of writing them without diactrics. So your sentence gave only first approximation of the policy and was lacking sth. The working copy of the policy and the ratio can be found, unfortunately in Polish language only at: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Zasady_pisowni_nazw_obcoj%C4% 99zycznych
Nobody ever suggested stripping diactrics other than from "traditionally polonized" names. I even remember accents on all these French names when we had old software.
On Polish Wikipedia Kuomintag was changed to Guomindang with tone marks Tokio was changed to Tokyo with macrons by... you! (instead of Polish traditionally polonized versions: Kuomintang and Tokio - and this has priority IMO and in the opinion of others, over the romanization rules).
Let me quote you from another mail:
On 9 Jan 2003 at 14:29, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
How can I write article about any Polish city if I can't write half of Polish diactrics ? The same applies to most of central Europe, and to most romanizations schemes of other scripts (which use lot of diactrics). How can I write any article about people from such places ? Engish Wikipedia screws this issue completely by stripping essential diactrics (like http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lech_Walesa).
So I can understand their willing to write Lech Walesa without our diactrics if that's the way they consider as already traditional in English language. However, let anglophones speak for themselves. For sure you can write articles in English without our diactrics as I can. There are more painful things in this world. Writing in any language is writing in this specific language respecting _it's_ rules, even if the lack of diactrics is a rule. Instead of rather writing in the language overriden by some extra syntax. Giving a correct spelling once in parentheses is what IMO is sufficient.
Going back to:
On 10 Jan 2003 at 4:41, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Let's hope that ancient browsers extinct sooner.
Unless somebody can show stats that say there is more than 1% of them, we can think of them as already extinct.
For sure, results are available somewhere in the net. I'll try to find out. But I'm doubting... who does research among Third World countries?
For people with direct access to the Internet, living in the so called Western World it is a "big" benefit. For people living in other parts of the world without all the "very" high technology, using some kind of "lower" high technology and using future off-line version of Wikipedia it might not be
What do you mean ? Standard browsers on both Linux and Windows support UTF-8. How does UTF-8 or not changes that ?
Hmm... W98 PL SE + it's standard IE 5.0 made some problems (that's my experience). I know people who like to stay on even cheaper system: W95 and IE 3.0 (I guess that's what was installed on W95) - let's hope that they are in those 1%.
Much bigger problem for them is lack of CD Wikipedia distributions.
I agree.
Both of us are happy because we've got the knowledge how to make our computers and our browsers deal with UTF-8.
I haven't configured anything. It can deal with it out of the box.
Same as me - I use IE 6.0. But I tried to use 5.0 and... failed. And IE 5.0 is not an extinct one!
Other people who just to want to read free encyclopedia, might not be as happy as we are - just watching some broken texts. Some people in this world prefer basic knowledge over nice look.
It's not about look, but correctness.
What's the use of correctness if one cannot see the correct form?
They are losing lot of knowledge now - after reading description of "Wroclaw" on English Wikipedia they won't be able to find it on map
For sure they are more intelligent than you suggest!
or in search engine.
One could say: that's the problem of the search engines, not our!
They are losing linguistic knowledge, because you can't write that without UTF-8.
Yes, they lose that but at _present_ that's not so important. Many of them don't care about it in daily life: you see how most of the users of English Wikipedia are happy with what they've got? Why to make they happier? Of course, once the English Wikipedia gain more non-anglophone users it will gain more insight in those things as well.
WIkipedia is aimed to last more that 2 years. So the problem will be solved somehow sooner or better. But I understand that you can't wait...
Anyway, how will UTF-8 or not affect them ?
See above
Youandme
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