Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Replace "light" with "sausages" and this may work...

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I18n (Internationalization) English Charset

English letter multi-language representation
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Example:
[he:>me wlfmxm<:he] for Hebrew "Ma Shlomchem".

In short:
If the PC doesn't know how to render the letters, at least you see something readable in English, and once you catch on, anybody could read it!

Details:
Instead of representing another language (especially bidi and non latin letterset languages), use a header and footer showing language (two letters per language are probably enough for all charsets).

A mapping from these letters to the Unicode list is possible, and that way we get more readable information, even if our browser or email doesn't support Unicode, or somehow we saved the information in ANSI.

We get smaller diskspace and memory too.

Actually I have an outdated provisional patent on this idea, somewhere in my papers, from sometime around '93 or 4...

pashute, Dec 23 2008

Three Wheels on My Wagon http://www.youtube....watch?v=fZ9LOPWrZwk
Cherokees? Everyone's heard of 'em, surely? [DrBob, Mar 19 2009]

[link]






       Tov. But why are you spelling "Shlomchem" as "wlfmxm" in your representation, rather than "shlomchem"? To me, "wlfmxm" isn't readable.   

       Most languages don't have a 1:1 mapping from glyphs to sounds - so this is harder than it sounds. Imagine applying this encoding to English!   

       I don't think you get smaller "diskspace and memory" (or are you comparing to USC-2 rather than UTF-8 unicode representation?), but that doesn't really matter anyway.
jutta, Dec 23 2008
  

       The idea is that when you DON'T get your text rendered correctly (something that happens a lot in Hebrew and Arabic), you many times get %23%32%24 or worse: ???? ?? ????? ??????? ?? ? ????? ?   

       With this system, that wouldn't happen. Bidi languages and many other languages resort to Unicode, which is definitely wasteful. You are giving a unique number to each gliph instead of simply saying: Now were writing with this type of language, please translate the English letters into my language's letters.   

       W is actually the ancient Shin. (means tooth in Phonecian and Hebrew) Q R S T and then W X Y Z are Kof (needle hole) Resh (pin head) Shin (using the Samech meaning ladder which originally was three steps on one main ladder pole ($) and Tav meaning a note (a cross or an X). The Greeks discarded the Shin having only a Sin, as well as the X - Teth having already the T (=t). So they used the drawing for a sound which was more useful in their language, the X. Y is the Vav (hook) and Z is the Zain (tool of war), which the greeks changed to F and G which were more common in their language, and were missing a special letter in the Phonecian.   

       So F is Vav and W shin. and for Het x is actually intuitive.   

       Toda for listening.
pashute, Mar 19 2009
  

       I can't even read 1337-speak in English much less a foreign language.
FlyingToaster, Mar 19 2009
  

       You don't need to. But people who do speak in a different language and read and write in it, and use a computer (which is in English, since luckily the allies won WW2) use different letters. And they (we, not including you unless you fly overseas) need a solution so they can write in their language, like this: &#1513;&#1500;&#1493;&#1501; (I have no idea what you'll see on your browser).   

       Actually its good for Cherokee too. But then maybe your not aware of that nation.
pashute, Mar 19 2009
  

       sp: I18n
placid_turmoil, Mar 19 2009
  

       Thanks [placid], corrected it. [Ian], here's what you see if I wrote that in Hebrew or Arabic, and if your browser would work wrong and not give you the original Hebrew or Arabic letters. Instead you would see the following English: "[Heb]AintrnWnlziiWn[/Heb]". Any Arabic reader or Hebrew reader can instantly and intuitively understand this.
In the current case you see question marks, numbers or at best (in case I typed it without setting the keyboard to the alternative language): "thbyrbabkhzhhai". (The 't' being the keyboard key for Alef or Alif).
pashute, Apr 16 2009
  
      
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