Re: SIL Toolbox and IPA Unicode 1.0

--- Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:

> A) You're over-reacting. It's just Philippe. In his
> world, anything that
> requires thought is badly-designed.
>
This is not what I mean. I like to spend time thinking
about worthy things. I hate to spoil it about stupid
things. And I hate people who make me waste my time
upon stupid things. That's all.

OK, just an example (among thousands). In my job, I
got a new PC, with a Windows 2000 system. Why I had to
change from Windows NT to 2000 is not exactly clear to
me yet, but anyhow. So the people who did install the
new one made an image of another PC having a similar
configuration to mine. Of course, many problems, but
let's skip the details. The first Word document I got
from outside (e-mail attached) used a numerotation,
like: 1, 1.1, 1.1.1, etc. Nice. Except that when I
printed it, the numerotation went out in Arabic
numbers. More precisely, Saudi Arabian style, as Word
was kind enough to inform me. Printer problem ? No,
when I looked at the screen, it was in Arabic too.
Virus ? Al Qaida problem ? Original document abnormal
? Let's skip the detail of the hypotheses I and my
colleagues made. What I can tell you is that we spent
about 8 working hours to finally find the origin of
the problem (some obscure parameter hidden in the
depths of Office). How much cost 8 hours work to my
company ? What was the interest of these 8 hours ? I
could have done interesting things in that time. And
how often in my life do I have to use an Arabic
numerotation at all?

(Why the PC where the image was made from worked with
Arabic numbers is still less clear to me. The user was
from Brittany, and hardly suspect of learning Arabic
during worktime. She probably hit some wrong key with
the corner of a file).


=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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