Re: Internationalized vs. localized

[Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <brunner@nic-naa.net>]

> Imagine you've sent a letter addressed to a contact.

OK. I've imagined a 3 and 5/8th by 6 1/2 inch (9.2 x 16.5 cm) envelope,
with a cheery seasonal note card inside, addressed to Ms. Ima Spook.

> A letter with an "Internationalized" address (in ASCII) can be read and
> delivered by any mailman in the world.

Hmm. I've used characters in the set [A-Z][a-z][0-9][-,.], but as they are
on a paper medium, I've really no idea how they are encoded. My IBM Selectric
may be partial to EBCDIC, it does have a sense of mechanical humor, or it may
consider characters on paper to be an uncoded character set.

I forgot to ask my letter carrier if he can read ASCII. I wonder if he is
more comfortable with binary, octal, hex, or decimal?

> A letter with a "Localized" address (in full UTF-8) can only be read by
> mailmen who can read the local script.

I've never actually encountered a person, regardless of profession, outside
of the handful that make up the UTC, who can read UTF-8. I used to hang up
all the bit patterns for each multi-octet sequence for EUC and HP15 in my
offices at Building 5 (Sun) and at COSL (HP), and even so, I never could
"read" with any facility. Maybe they have better letter carriers in the UK.

Cheers,
Eric