From: Jan Witt Date: 2002-08-07T03:20:10+09:00 Subject: Re: Unicode in Ruby now?(ppc) Ladies and Gentlemen, I've been trying to follow (whatever that implies for those not within the inner circle of the cognoscenti) this strange discussion about Unicode (my spell checker suggested Fungicide) meeting Ruby. (Like Godzilla meeting Dracula or whatever) To me, incomprehensibility seemed in inverse proportion to general relevance. Now the tiring heroes seem to be withdrawing from the battlefield without really having produced any convincing position statements. So, maybe it's been a red herring anyway, or a can of worms that , like Pandora's box, that should rather have stayed unopened. Unfortunately, a great many important questions have been left unanswered: Where will I get my email client program that accepts Devanagari, Arabic , Japanese, Tibetan, cuneiform subject lines? How will I be able to parse the mail text bodies, extract keywords, produce or consult dictionaries, put proper names of geographic locations in their native fonts on maps, produce multilingual/multi font questionnaires and reports? How will I bridge the gaps between web pages and local GUI, how will I make icons into font glyphs and vice versa? How will I file gestures from Ameslan (American sign language for the deaf), or musical scores, or ballet choreography or the Buddha mudras? How will I exchange encoded information on these many subjects with the worldwide birds of my feather? Could it be (Maybe I'm totally misguided in stating this ) that notwithstanding its glory and splendor, Ruby today is still another skeletal or "glue" language, that runs the risks of Narcissism, admiring and further polishing its own intrinsic beauty, its scintillating jewel facets, without caring so much for the starving makers of [earnestly] advanced applications, who want to make their Swiss watches run on "24 rubies" ? You probably have read Matthew 7:6: Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. The more serious modern position is that of the swine, who are heard to sigh: " Please, not pearls again! " (Perl pun not intended) I better stop here. Jan ----- Does one snatch a cripple's crutch away because it is not the latest sort? Is it even enough to put the latest sort in his hands? He may not know how to use it. But this is not an argument against the latest sort of crutch. John Fowles "The Aristos" , 1964 nb: ppc is french and is an abbreviation of "pour prendre cong�" = for saying goodbye There was a time when the four corners of visiting cards (= business cards) were marked pf pour feliciter pcd pour condoler ppc pour prendre conge i forgot the fourth You'd fold or tear off the corresponding corner and drop your card at your friends'. Like :-) and stuff. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com