Comments on: International Language Support

International Language Support

mathowie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:17:21 -0800

So I think I have international language support working finally. Please test in the comments here.

اذان ظهر: ۱۳‎/۱۱ • اذان مغرب: ۲۰‎/۳۲ فردا: • اذان صبح: ۴‎/۲۹ • طلوع

Pictographs and Icons:✈ ☎ ☼ ✮

By: i_cola

i_cola — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:20:37 -0800

Your mother's a what?!?

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:22:03 -0800

I ♠ my dog.

By: Rothko

Rothko — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:23:31 -0800

Äwësömë!

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:26:43 -0800

japanese:
アクセス解析を眺めてて気づいた事。
ラードご飯で検索してきてる人が異常に多い。。

korean:
男女

chinese:
雅虎中文. 新聞 - 為你即時掌握天下事. 搜尋, 搜尋

By: chunking express

chunking express — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:27:33 -0800

Hello, my name is ரமணன்.

By: geoff.

geoff. — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:32:46 -0800

הל

Weird in Windows 2003 (I assume XP also) when entering Hebrew it automatically adjusts to go right to left.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:34:19 -0800

Yeah, that's how hebrew and farsi go (the arabic in my post was right to left in firefox).

By: yeoz

yeoz — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:35:31 -0800

‮This message was not typed backwards.‭

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:35:44 -0800

éて気‡ ‡ ‡ ♥ ♥ ♥

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:37:22 -0800

♥ ♥ ♥ &

ok, you're going to hate me, but if you type
&amp;
and then do several previews, you get different results each time.

By: macrone

macrone — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:37:50 -0800

汉字/漢字

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:39:05 -0800

Yay! I ♥ Unicode.

By: xil

xil — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:40:21 -0800

☞ hey, løøk at this ☜
finally, we can say this ⅋ that

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:40:25 -0800

I love how when I select the arabic text in Firefox/Windows the glyphs actually change as I select them. Man, this stuff is a pain to program for.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:40:41 -0800

yeah, andrew, this doesn't fix the ampersand problems, but it does let you directly paste in any sort of crazy unicode, so no more worries about entities.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:40:47 -0800

to explain myself better, say someone asks "how do i handle amperand correctly in xml". the reply might be "you have to type &amp as &", but previewing that reply will break it.

By: macrone

macrone — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:41:19 -0800

送˜™견
(originally a mix of named entities, hex unicode entities, decimal unicode entities, and ASCII entities; converted to actual characters in preview; survived multiple previews)

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:41:21 -0800

ah, ok, posted before i saw your reply.

By: yeoz

yeoz — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:42:35 -0800

Please don't delete the above post, it's not actually empty :)‭

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:43:38 -0800

Ok. Firefox on OSX. The post above me has the post metadata backwards!!

(i.e. 82 yluJ etc.) instead of July 28

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:43:51 -0800

sorry, I accidentally axed it. post it again? I'm curious what you did to break the comment parsing.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:44:24 -0800

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:44:28 -0800

Oops. Did Matt delete it?

By: Gyan

Gyan — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:44:53 -0800

Doesn't seem much point to type in Devnagari. Many of the characters can't be formed.

The closest approximation to Metafilter is मोटािफलतर which actually reads MotaFilmter.

By: rajbot

rajbot — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:45:34 -0800

ॐ

By: yeoz

yeoz — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:46:16 -0800

Unicode has all these nifty control characters, including a bunch of different right-to-left marks. I inserted a RLO 'Right-to-Left Override' (U+202E)... (Oh, and only because vacapinta asked me to.)

By: If I Had An Anus

If I Had An Anus — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:47:07 -0800

Wow, dude, I thought were against fixing this. Who says you don't listen to the people? The cool phone is ringing. ☏

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓

*whips up a steaming plate of hotcakes for matt ♨*

By: 김치

김치 — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:47:31 -0800

顶呱呱
باهِر
tính từ
우수하다

By: Gyan

Gyan — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:47:33 -0800

How do you type unicode anyway? [Some key] + [number]?

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:47:44 -0800

thanks, matt

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:48:09 -0800

If I asked you to jump off a clifff...?

By: yeoz

yeoz — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:48:48 -0800

Which cliff?

By: i_cola

i_cola — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:48:53 -0800

ං

Ooooo! Sinhala!

By: i_cola

i_cola — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:51:18 -0800

...and Tamil

ஃ

By: yeoz

yeoz — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:52:21 -0800

Another RLO...
‮

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:55:30 -0800

Wow, dude, I thought were against fixing this.

I have spent a few hours here and there researching the problem for 4+ years, so I did a few google searches and kept seeing people say "the latest version of ColdFusion fixes everything and offers unicode support out of the box."

So I spent a couple hours researching and everything said that yes, it should work. I ran some tests and noticed unicode was being submitted to the database as garbled, and learned that in SQL statements you need to preface any unicode submissions with a "N" which I added just now and wow, it finally works.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:56:12 -0800

რა არის ხელოვნური ქვა?
Georgian!

Matt, you ARE the greatest!
*salaams*

or rather:

*سلامs*

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:56:19 -0800

Hmm, I guess I need to filter out the RLO control character?

By: i_cola

i_cola — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:56:21 -0800

Which came first?
The ก or the ข?

(Thai alphabet joke.)

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:57:13 -0800

I ♥ languagehat for riding my ass about this.

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:57:16 -0800

yeoz broke the internets.

By: 김치

김치 — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:00:12 -0800

W00t! This is excellent, thanks Matt!

Any chance you can add this fix to profiles as well?

And what's the story on Unicode usernames?

By: raedyn

raedyn — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:00:21 -0800

Thank you for your efforts on this, Matt.

By: mazola

mazola — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:08:29 -0800

Джуе добре!

By: j.edwards

j.edwards — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:08:38 -0800

I ♣ Seals

∀x∀y∀z(φ(x,y,p) ∧φ(x,z,p) ⇒ y = z) ⇒ ∀X∃Y∀y(y ∈ Y ⇔ (∃x ∈ X)φ(x,y,p))

Looks good to me. I see this as being a great use of Live Preview.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:10:57 -0800

Very nice. Thank you.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:12:31 -0800

♨

♨

[testing]

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:15:45 -0800

Lots and lots of question marks here in IE 5.1 Mac OS 9.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:15:53 -0800

sometimes (not often, but above "Georgian", for example), i see ????? instead of cool characters. is this because i don't have the right character sets in my browser?

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:16:32 -0800

great minds...

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:17:16 -0800

☺

.

By: j.edwards

j.edwards — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:19:10 -0800

If you're running Windows XP, go to Control Panel→Regional and Language Options→Languages and check both boxes to install additional languages. You'll need your installation CD.

I am unfamiliar with how to install these glyphs in OS 9 or other operating systems.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:26:44 -0800

And what's the story on Unicode usernames?

I'm not going to allow them, since someone could just create a user named "mathowie" where the a was a unicode a, but appears identical to users viewing the site.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:29:00 -0800

woot. that also works for win2k (except that i didn't need my cd and i have to restart my computer, so i haven't actually seen the improvement, but "georgian" was one of the unchecked boxes). thanks, j.edwards.

By: mcwetboy

mcwetboy — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:38:33 -0800

这把笤帚, 它振动?
Αυτή η σκούπα, αυτό δονείται;
このほうき、それは振動するか。
이 비, 그것은 진동한다?
Этот веник, оно вибрирует?

By: btwillig

btwillig — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:43:03 -0800

☠

By: NotMyselfRightNow

NotMyselfRightNow — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:44:26 -0800

Awesome! We can now implement the greatest feature ever:

Thank you for visiting MetaTalk. Please legibly insert your complaint here: ං

By: btwillig

btwillig — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:50:19 -0800

☠
boo

By: me3dia

me3dia — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:53:25 -0800

Ӈéÿ! Cool!

By: FieldingGoodney

FieldingGoodney — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:53:42 -0800

ファキーング　グレート！

By: matildaben

matildaben — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:57:52 -0800

MotaFilmter. Heh.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:02:36 -0800

მეთაპილტერ: გალამაზდება

Thank you, Matt!

By: gramschmidt

gramschmidt — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:16:00 -0800

Μ Ξ τ Δ ƒ Ι ⌊ Τ Σ ℜ

α β Ι ∂ ∈ ς

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:18:31 -0800

This is like language fireworks.
Freaks out the pets, but looks dang purty.

Thanks Matt. Couple of hours wasted very well indeed.

By: kenko

kenko — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:25:00 -0800

Seems to be resolved.

By: The Jesse Helms

The Jesse Helms — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:34:24 -0800

➊➋➌➍➎➏➐➑➒➓

By: Catfry

Catfry — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:49:00 -0800

wæs this nøw næcæssårø? ÆØÅ

By: gramschmidt

gramschmidt — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:53:34 -0800

鬥 ﾯ ﷺ

︼ ﹌ ㏆

㋟ ♞ ⌨

By: gramschmidt

gramschmidt — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 15:55:35 -0800

Hmm. Those all worked on Live Preview.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:06:21 -0800

Who wouldn't want this‽

By: gen

gen — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:17:26 -0800

うお！チョべりグー！

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:18:28 -0800

∬_R² (e^x²+y²) dA = π

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:22:33 -0800

It's a pity that so many of these glyphs are so poorly designed. Like the interrobang one is hard to see at my regular font size. On Wikipedia I have taken to setting a custom style for IPA because it is impossible to read the crappy fonts at normal size.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:35:40 -0800

korean:
男女

That's not Korean, but I see that 김치 tested it upthread. This bilingual keyboard would be coming in handy now, if my Korean were actually worth a damn.

*sighs*

바보 선생입니다.

By: sciurus

sciurus — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:40:16 -0800

It doesn't appear to support Elvish.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:48:02 -0800

Elvish has left the building, sciurus.

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:48:13 -0800

Your browser supports Unicode Elvish?

By: Dean Keaton

Dean Keaton — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:04:15 -0800

Now all we need are universal language translators!

BONG

By: yeoz

yeoz — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:21:57 -0800

馬鹿!

By: fvw

fvw — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:25:35 -0800

∀x∈ℝ: ⌈x⌉ = −⌊−x⌋

Very cool indeed…

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:42:03 -0800

➊➋➌➍➎ ➏➐➑➒➓

11 12! *doo dee doodle doo dee dee doo doo*

12!

By: flashboy

flashboy — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:53:11 -0800

No, now all we need is a unicode

...and we're sorted.

By: caddis

caddis — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:58:27 -0800

I ? this. It should prevent all those question marks showing up when you mean a heart.

By: geekyguy

geekyguy — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:05:34 -0800

谢谢!

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:08:59 -0800

wear it

By: flashboy

flashboy — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:17:01 -0800

Or perhaps a unicode , I dunno.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:19:36 -0800

What I especially like is that I just cut and pasted something from another site and it worked fine. No screwing around with hex or entities required.

By: obloquy

obloquy — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:43:35 -0800

≠ §º•¡∞

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:51:35 -0800

"It's a pity that so many of these glyphs are so poorly designed"

Depends on what Unicode typefaces you've installed that have that character. Most of us are probably seeing Arial MS Unicode, which although quite extensive, is not that attractive.

Thanks, Matt, for this. I really, really, really mean it. And LH for pressing Matt on it. I'm surprised to see that the fix was so easy, but no doubt this sort of thing is much more supported out-of-box than when I was working.

Anyway, I've been saying for a long time that everything, everywhere, should have full Unicode support.

Matt, for usernames, you could of course just filter out all Unicode characters that are identical to the ASCII characters you've allowed.

By: ori

ori — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:00:59 -0800

!שלום

By: ori

ori — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:08:04 -0800

מטאפילטר

By: ori

ori — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:09:03 -0800

^^ that's "Metafilter" in Hebrew :) Thanks Matt!

By: ?!

?! — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:19:27 -0800

‽

Wow, it makes me look like I've lost weight!

By: dhruva

dhruva — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:42:26 -0800

shalom lecha! (ma nishma?)

By: keswick

keswick — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:59:21 -0800

what's the unicode for the goatse dingbat?

By: Tuwa

Tuwa — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:59:41 -0800

غزة

কলকাতা

By: Tuwa

Tuwa — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:05:28 -0800

keswick, shorthand is • (or maybe ☯, which is what he's got a problem with).

By: semmi

semmi — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:18:07 -0800

Magyarországi fürdők. It works.

By: ori

ori — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:38:42 -0800

dhruva: "shalom lecha! (ma nishma?)"

hey! he-yiti batuach she-ani dover haivrit hayachid bemetafilter...gam ata expat israeli?

da"sh me'vancouver..

By: jazon

jazon — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:54:33 -0800

☃☃☃☃

By: dhruva

dhruva — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:07:37 -0800

lo! ani bey hodu, aval ha-yiti be'eretz le shnayim (and i'm forgetting hebrew at an exponential rate :)

By: neckro23

neckro23 — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:16:05 -0800

☞☻☜

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:25:02 -0800

Варкалось. Хливкие шорьки
Пырялись по наве.
И хрюкотали зелюки
Как мюмзики в мове.

О, бойся Бармаглота, сын!
Он так свиреп и дик,
А в глуще рымит исполин —
Злопастный Брандашмыг!

Но взял он меч, и взял он щит,
Высоких полон дум.
В глущобу путь его лежит,
Под дерево Тумтум.

Он стал под дерево и ждёт,
И вдруг грабахнул гром —
Летит ужасный Бармаглот
И пылкает огнём!

Раз-два, раз-два! Горит трава,
Взы-взы — стрижает меч.
Ува! Ува! И голова
Барабардает с плеч!

О светозарный мальчик мой!
Ты победил в бою!
О храброславленный герой,
Хвалу тебе пою!

Варкалось. Хливкие шорьки
Пырялись по наве.
И хрюкотали зелюки
Как мюмзики в мове.

By: Steve_at_Linnwood

Steve_at_Linnwood — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:44:01 -0800

メタフィルター

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:52:38 -0800

Here is a rosetta stone for you:

这不，有些心急的尼康发烧友等不及了，开始YY了，幻想着未来两年尼康能够把自己梦想中的梦幻机型和器材都发布出来，并且煞有介事的把具体规格也列了出来。他们希望尼康能够看到这个列表，争口气，圆尼康用户一个梦。笔者作为以为尼康用户，十分赞同这些用户的观点，当然也要尽一份力了。不过按照尼康的这么多年的表现，我看我们也就是YY罢了。不管怎样，先来看看这些让发烧友苦等的器材都有哪些吧。

Если возникает необходимость в каком-либо документе, то заказчица должна затребовать его точно так же, как и любое другое свойство программы: с помощью карточки. Команда оценит стоимость разработки такого документа, а заказчица определит, в какой итерации она хотела бы его получить. Документирование дизайна системы Как и большинство других инкрементных разработок (начиная с Спирального Метода Боэма), ХР не синтезирует дизайн системы, а скорее, постепенно наращивает его в процессе работы. Опять-таки, поскольку в ХР все программисты активно общаются между собой, им не приходится помногу работать с бумажной документацией. Весь проект создается на основе двухнедельных итераций, так что на реализацию того или иного свойства уходит не более нескольких дней (это происходит потому, что свойства разбиваются на малые составляющие, которые и реализуются одна за другой, а вовсе не потому что ХР-программисты круче обычных).

자바언어는 인터넷 프로그래밍 개발언어로 크게 각광을 받고 있고, OMG 그룹의 CORBA는 분산 객체들간의 통신 및 아키텍쳐로 최근들어 많은연구와 개발이 진행되고 있다. 이 두 기술들의 공통된 점은 모두가 객체지향방식을 채택하고 있으며, 차세대 웹 애플리케이션 개발을 위한 핵심 기술로평가고 있는 것이다.본 강좌에서는 이 두 기술들이 가지는 실용적인 가치, 장점, 효과 및 그 한계점들을 알아 보고, 설계 및 아키텍쳐 표준이 CORBA와 구현 기술인 Java가소프트웨어 개발 과정에 어떻게 효과적으로 접목되어 사용 될 수 있는지 를 살펴본다.특히 이 기술들이 웹기반의 클라이언트/서버 및 분산 시스템개발에 어떻게 효과적으로 활용 될 수 있는 지를 실용적 측면에서 알아 보고 실행해 본다.

היקפי השוק ב-2002 משקפים את השינויים בפעילות באזורים השונים בעולם ואת התנופה הגוברת בהתקנות ציוד מטרו וציוד אחר למרחקים קצרים. אלה הובילו לשינויים בנתחי השוק בכמה קטגוריות. צפון אמריקה ומערב אירופה נפגעו בצורה קשה במיוחד כתוצאה מהתמוטטות ענף התקשורת. בו בזמן, סין וקוריאה עזרו להקטין את הפגיעה באזור אסיה והאוקיינוס השקט. כתוצאה מכך, כמה חברות אסייתיות שממוקדות בשוק המקומי, כמו Huawei, זכו לגידול במכירות בכמה קטגוריות בין שנת 2001 ל-2002, על רקע מגמת צמצום ממנה סבלו רוב ספקי הציוד האחרים.

นายนาวี ศรีผดุง รองประธานอาวุโสฝ่ายบิสิเนส โซลูชั่นส์ บริษัท เค เอส ซี คอมเมอร์เชียล อินเตอร์เนต จำกัด เปิดเผยว่า “ปัจจุบันตลาดของผู้ใช้อินเทอร์เน็ตในต่างจังหวัด นับเป็นตลาดที่มี ศักยภาพและมีแนวโน้มในการเติบโตสูง เนื่องจากยังมีจำนวนผู้ใช้อินเทอร์เน็ตไม่มากนัก และได้รับการส่งเสริมจากภาครัฐให้มีการใช้อินเทอร์เน็ตอย่างแพร่หลายมากยิ่งขึ้น เค เอส ซี เองได้ให้ความสำคัญกับการดูแลและให้บริการลูกค้าต่างจังหวัดอย่างต่อเนื่อง โดยได้จัดตั้งสำนักงานสาขาในจังหวัดต่างๆ เพื่อเพิ่มความสะดวกและรวดเร็วในการให้การบริการลูกค้า ไม่ว่าจะเป็นการติดตั้งและบริการหลังการขาย ในกรณีที่ลูกค้ามีปัญหาก็จะสามารถติดต่อรับบริการได้ทันที โดยไม่ต้องติดต่อมายังสำนักงานใหญ่ในกรุงเทพฯ และในปีนี้ เค เอส ซี ได้วางกลยุทธ์ในการขยายตลาดในต่างจังหวัด โดยมีการพัฒนาคุณภาพของการให้บริการ พร้อมทั้งมีกิจกรรมทางการตลาดเพื่อเพิ่มจำนวนผู้ใช้บริการในต่างจังหวัดด้วย”

By: weston

weston — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:56:36 -0800

✈ ☎

Anybody wanna play Hüsker Dü?

By: nightchrome

nightchrome — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:15:56 -0800

てすと日本語テスト

By: mono blanco

mono blanco — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:18:09 -0800

妙极了！

By: mosch

mosch — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:18:59 -0800

I ✈NY

By: geekyguy

geekyguy — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:20:37 -0800

Ok. So it would be great if the server could spit out a 'This is in XXX language' either before, after or somewhere around the used language.

By: dabitch

dabitch — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:22:20 -0800

ha!!

My tattoo: ☣

By: davy

davy — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:22:55 -0800

Why is this necessary on an English-language site? Do Chinese pages do the same? I'm sure y'all who know how to read Sanskrit or Korean think it's neat, but please, after tonight, if you're going to post something in another language (whatever character set it's in) do include a translation.

It's not that "English is the official language of the Internet!", it's that I admit to being woefully limited, linguistically speaking.

On the other hand, if Matt wants to start or spin off a non-English Metafilter site or 20, you could feel safe there from my interference. I've learned not to trust Babelfish translations, and I'm simply past the age where I could learn Hindi or Uighur.

By: dabitch

dabitch — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:58:13 -0800

This is FUN ❣

By: dabitch

dabitch — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:00:24 -0800

In ☭ Russia, glyphs sign YOU!

By: peacay

peacay — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:15:25 -0800

*crosses fingers..*
¢ ¤ § ¬ Æ ß Θ Σ ϑ ™ ∀ ∇ ∞

By: peacay

peacay — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:19:25 -0800

✈€→ℑλ³£ cool :) Thanks Matt.

By: ori

ori — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 02:10:17 -0800

dhruva, magniv.. ha-ivrit shelcha mamash lo ra-a bishvil mishehu shehaya ba-aretz rak shnatayim.

By: The Jesse Helms

The Jesse Helms — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 02:51:38 -0800

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

By: uncanny hengeman

uncanny hengeman — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 03:36:21 -0800

Me ruv you rong time!

By: Jeanne

Jeanne — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 03:41:45 -0800

Why is this necessary on an English-language site?

There have been a couple of AskMes dealing with Japanese or Chinese where this would have been humongously helpful--a little while ago, I asked for help finding Chinese pop music, and since I didn't know enough Chinese to match the transliterated names to the CDs on store shelves, Unicode support would have been very nice.

Niche usage, yeah, but I for one am glad it's around for when I need it.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 03:55:54 -0800

There's a FPP now in another language. I really don't understand davy's request at all. If there are "best of the web" posts in another language, and there's (or there could be) people that can read the post, I don't see why I as an anglophone have the right to expect that it be translated into English. That's really no different than saying that it's okay to post US-NewsFilter but not Euro-NewsFilter. Of course, I'm sure there's people that make that argument.

The best thing that could happen to mefi would be to develop a larger non-US and non-anglophone audience and membership.

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 05:24:41 -0800

yeoz: professionally breaking shit since 1846.

By: squidlarkin

squidlarkin — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 05:28:56 -0800

イエイ！　ファイナリ！

By: squidlarkin

squidlarkin — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 05:33:02 -0800

Be nice if it fixed things retroactively, but I imagine that's more or less impossible. Still, ありがとう　ございます！

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 06:00:39 -0800

Thanks Matt.

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 06:31:34 -0800

There's a FPP now in another language. I really don't understand davy's request at all. If there are "best of the web" posts in another language, and there's (or there could be) people that can read the post, I don't see why I as an anglophone have the right to expect that it be translated into English. That's really no different than saying that it's okay to post US-NewsFilter but not Euro-NewsFilter. Of course, I'm sure there's people that make that argument.

How would we know it is best-of-the-web if a majority of us cannot read (and flag) it? How would the administrators manage to, either?

By: languagehat

languagehat — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 06:57:52 -0800

Oh, come on. People aren't going to suddenly start posting in weird languages (after all, they could have been doing so all along -- plenty of French and Spanish words and phrases have been quoted, although you had to be careful with the preview bug). The Chinese post on the front page is a beautiful one-off, and the meaning is explained both in mouseover text and in the links themselves. And davy, you're never too old to learn Uighur!

In case anyone's wondering, the poem Krrrlson posted is Dina Orlovskaya's famous late-'60s translation of "Jabberwocky." And b1tr0t, it's exactly such a "Rosetta Stone" -- a collection of international treaties in English, French, German, and Russian -- that got me started studying Russian in college, because I was so frustrated I couldn't even sound out the words. I bought myself a little Collins Gem Dictionary and there was no turning back.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:00:19 -0800

By: spilon

spilon — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:05:48 -0800

☃
Kranky the snowman....

By: einarorn

einarorn — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:24:43 -0800

Icelandic: þ æ ð ö á é í ó

perfect!

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:45:08 -0800

Sweet.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:46:27 -0800

Just out of curiosity matt, how did you fix it?

By: grouse

grouse — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:01:19 -0800

I just found out that &hearts; = ♥. Interesting.

By: jonson

jonson — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:02:54 -0800

jonson ♥ learning this...

By: gramschmidt

gramschmidt — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:03:24 -0800

鬥 ﾯ ﷺ

︼ ﹌ ㏆

㋟

By: gramschmidt

gramschmidt — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:04:29 -0800

Seriously, Matt, all of those worked in Live Preview and on Preview.

By: raedyn

raedyn — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:05:42 -0800

It doesn't appear to support Elvish. - sciurus
Elvish has left the building, sciurus. - mr_crash_davis

I just about died. Thanks, crash, I needed that laugh.

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:20:15 -0800

Rothko, that's hardly an argument that the place should be made english-only. Either enlist volunteer translation, or (more likely) don't do anything, as it will be a small portion of the site anyway.

This argument could be made about many other types of posts. Just sayin'

By: gramschmidt

gramschmidt — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:24:13 -0800

〠

By: gramschmidt

gramschmidt — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:26:18 -0800

〠

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:35:12 -0800

Rothko, that's hardly an argument that the place should be made english-only. Either enlist volunteer translation, or (more likely) don't do anything, as it will be a small portion of the site anyway.

This argument could be made about many other types of posts. Just sayin'

No, it can't. Your argument: Non-english posts should be discouraged/disallowed because the site owners/moderators speak and read english. As such, non-english posts may be harder to moderate.

I don't know what "other types" of posts you're talking about that the site owners are unable to moderate because of some educational barrier (like language). What do you mean?

By: Bdave

Bdave — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 09:00:47 -0800

㎭

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 09:02:46 -0800

My point was that "it will be a small portion of the site anyway" is a very poor excuse. That same argument can used to justify any number of the other types of posts that a small, but vocal minority will complain about. So — just sayin'

By: Bdave

Bdave — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 09:14:41 -0800

шоДҤ ҉ ҉

By: eddydamascene

eddydamascene — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 09:29:45 -0800

You people are giving me las ñáñaras.

By: matteo

matteo — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 09:44:22 -0800

*cries*

By: mystyk

mystyk — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 09:52:10 -0800

On that non-english FPP, did you happen to try a mouseover on the links? It explains them pretty well.

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 09:55:09 -0800

People moan enough about it when y2karl does it — is a mouseover now a requirement for a comprehensible FPP?

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 10:54:21 -0800

Rothko, simple question: Do you think posts should be required to be written only in the language that is most popular at mefi?

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:03:30 -0800

A post designed primarily around being accessible only to the poster and perhaps a handful of others, instead of being focused around the links or discussion within for the benefit community as a whole, seems like a bad idea. Make of that opinion what you will.

Let me ask you a simple question back: Are we sharing the best of the web with others or patting oneself on the back for knowing some Unicode?

By: mendel

mendel — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:06:20 -0800

Unicode is Unicode: implementing the accents required to type French or Spanish loanwords in English is the same as implementing all the other characters. It's one thing to worry about all the Sanskrit posts that are bound to show up, but it's a bit silly to think no-one will ever talk about El Niño or flambé or Mötley Crüe on mefi.

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:10:52 -0800

It's one thing to worry about all the Sanskrit posts that are bound to show up, but it's a bit silly to think no-one will ever talk about El Niño or flambé or Mötley Crüe on mefi.

I don't think I ever mentioned flambé. It's pretty clear what we were talking about here, mendel.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:10:58 -0800

Let me ask you a simple question, Rothko: Do you think we should only be allowed to use the 26 letters of the English alphabet?

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:14:11 -0800

You avoided my simple question. Why?

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:18:22 -0800

You avoided my simple question. Why?

Because I don't see the world in black and white, sorry. Interestingly, for what it's worth, my original question never really got a straight answer, either.

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:20:52 -0800

I sense the inevitable flambé coming from the usual suspects, and I don't really have much invested in this conversation beyond figuring out a non-evasive answer to my first question, so I'll just leave my opinion at that. It's not the end of the world if we disagree!

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:44:48 -0800

How would we know it is best-of-the-web if a majority of us cannot read (and flag) it? How would the administrators manage to, either?

Alright, this looks to be the first question you're talking about. So, I'll be sure to answer it. I thought I did, but I'll do it again. Somewhere you think I'm being dismissive, and I want to correct that.

The audience of a thread determines whether it's "best" or not. Science threads, flash game threads, political threads; each of these attracts a different audience. The audiences often overlap, but not always. This does not affect their standing adversely. Similarly, a foreign-language thread will have a particular audience; like other threads, this audience will only be a subsection of the entire mefi userbase. Not a problem.

The site's admins and moderators (really just the two people, mathowie and jessamyn) deal with english-language threads by either reading them, or responding to complaints. I'd guess mostly by responding to complaints, since their time is finite, and they probably don't read the site every hour.

The procedure would be exactly the same for non-english threads, except they personally would be unable to read the text. This is a language barrier, nothing more. Enlist the help of people who know both english and the foreign language to solve the problem. If you cannot find anyone willing to do this, then the thread didn't have an audience to begin with, and consequently didn't "offend" anyone, at least not enough to make them flag the post.

All of this falls under the umbrella concept that these foreign-language threads will certainly always be outnumbered (vastly) by english-language threads. Sure, they do need moderation, but the extra work involved certainly doesn't indicate that there should be some kind of moratorium on foreign-language threads.

So, could you please clear up your position? Are you just whining about people using a foreign language, or are you actually going somewhere with your complaint (i.e., calling for the establishment of an official mefi language)?

If you aren't going somewhere with your complaint, do you understand that it's simply pointless whining? If not, what do you consider it to be?

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:54:18 -0800

How would we know it is best-of-the-web if a majority of us cannot read (and flag) it?

What's stopping you flagging it?

By: Tuwa

Tuwa — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:09:18 -0800

Foreign letters! Sound the alarm! Batten the hatches!

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:12:22 -0800

What's stopping you flagging it?

Do I pick a flag at random?

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:12:26 -0800

WORST WEBSITE EVER

By: Gyan

Gyan — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:19:09 -0800

odinsdream : "Similarly, a foreign-language thread will have a particular audience; like other threads, this audience will only be a subsection of the entire mefi userbase. Not a problem."

There's a difference, which is that only those who already know the language can attempt to evaluate it. Regarding a science thread, I can read it and figure out that I don't understand it, in which case I may ask a question, or I find out it's uninteresting, in which case I skip it. This ability to evaluate is missing for foreign language posts, especially those in non-Roman scripts.

odinsdream : "The procedure would be exactly the same for non-english threads, except they personally would be unable to read the text. This is a language barrier, nothing more. Enlist the help of people who know both english and the foreign language to solve the problem. If you cannot find anyone willing to do this, then the thread didn't have an audience to begin with, and consequently didn't 'offend' anyone, at least not enough to make them flag the post."

Or maybe the only people willing to come forward is the poster and the flagger, IOW, He Said, She Said.

By: Rothko

Rothko — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:35:49 -0800

The audience of a thread determines whether it's "best" or not. Science threads, flash game threads, political threads; each of these attracts a different audience. The audiences often overlap, but not always. This does not affect their standing adversely. Similarly, a foreign-language thread will have a particular audience; like other threads, this audience will only be a subsection of the entire mefi userbase. Not a problem.

I think the audience size of these threads that can comprehend the material in question is quite different, which makes your comparison a poor one by nature. Not to mention that a deliberately tiny audience — we're talking a handful of people out of the thousands here — negatively affects the front page and the quality of a front page article, at least in terms of its connection to the larger community that exists here.

Saying that it only affects a small number of people is in general a really, really poor excuse for putting up any such a post, be it about language or anything else. For that matter I could use that same excuse for any other FPP someone else didn't like, which was deleted by the admins, which would have nothing to do with languages. Hence my non-binary, non-black-and-white, nuanced answer to your question.

Further, I think writing a post for the deliberate purpose of excluding a number of readers is not only a bad FPP by design, it sets a bad precedent. I'm sure it will be done again, just to impress certain people. In my book, that doesn't make it right — or very interesting, the usual standard for a good FPP. Which is a complaint that can be made about any poor FPP, and which is a legitimate reason for removing it outright.

Are you just whining about people using a foreign language, or are you actually going somewhere with your complaint (i.e., calling for the establishment of an official mefi language)?

Despite the baiting, neither. I already answered your question as well as a second time within this comment. You may not like the answer you're getting, but there it is.

By: skoosh

skoosh — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 14:09:16 -0800

[يہ اچھا ہے]

And I don't think we'll have a flood of Chinese/Thai/Russian posts that offer nothing to Anglophones. On the contrary, I think the one we've had so far was at least as transparent as some of the other (sometimes totally opaque) puzzle posts that have been allowed to stand. That slight risk of non-comprehension is a small price to pay to be able to use non-Latin alphabets without cursing at the screen.

ありがとうまあつ！

By: Roger Dodger

Roger Dodger — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 14:42:42 -0800

Here's an idea: If you can't read it, don't read it. You are not required to understand and comment on every single post. It seems to me there are plenty of people on Metafilter who don't even seem to understand English sometimes.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 15:04:08 -0800

Despite the baiting, neither. I already answered your question as well as a second time within this comment.

A post designed primarily around being accessible only to the poster and perhaps a handful of others, instead of being focused around the links or discussion within for the benefit community as a whole, seems like a bad idea. Make of that opinion what you will.

Can you expand on the "seems like a bad idea" part, in terms of a solution to resolve the "badness" of the idea?

The only thing I can come up with from reading your comments is that you'd like for there to be an official language of metafilter, and for your convenience, you'd like it to be English.

Is this a misrepresentation of your opinion? I realise you haven't specifically made this recommendation, but I'm trying to see where you're going with your "I have a bad feeling about this" statement, and this is the only thing I can come up with. Help me out here.

By: Dr. Zira

Dr. Zira — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 15:11:34 -0800

༒
࿊ ࿋

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 16:17:08 -0800

Rothko's point is a good point and should be answered seriously. Which, um, several have tried to do. But I'll give it a shot.

The way I see it is that Matt created this metablog with one mandate only: "best of the web" with, hopefully, good discussion of what is posted. I'm pretty sure it was English-only and US-centric merely by default, not design. Non-anglophone posts clearly fall within the mandate.

As it happens, being anglophone and us-centric, a lot of "best of the web" content is effectively excluded. But what is a good reason to officially perpetuate this? Rothko is arguing that the anglophone bias be part of this site's design, but the argument really resolves into majority-rule.

As everyone knows from the NewsFilter arguments, I certainly don't believe that MeFi is majority-rule. It's a benign dictatorship where Matt regulates certain things and then within that there is a form of a self-governing community. I think Matt set the mandate for MeFi as I described it above, and I don't see that that has changed. So if the mandate allows non-anglophone posts, then I don't think the current community has any right to veto them. We are the community we are by accident, not design. Non-anglophones should have exactly as much ability to post and participate here as we did.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 16:42:14 -0800

I'm trying to see where you're going with your "I have a bad feeling about this" statement

I think maybe he meant that he has a bad feeling about it. Why are you so invested in his position? He's not defending at doctoral thesis, here.

By: odinsdream

Huh. Unicode.