"Alain Williams" wrote in message
news:20170915092114.gh8...@phcomp.co.uk...
On Fri, Sep 15, 2017 at 10:04:51AM +0100, Tony Marston wrote:
>The light bulb was invented by an English man (Joseph Swan), the
>television by a
>Scott (John Logie Baird); so should the Brits and Scots be the
>ones that define
>light bulb and TV standards to suit their convenience ?
>
Don't be silly. Neither light bulbs nor television sets are affected
by which case is used in which character set.
>>Because the English-speaking world invented both computers and the
>>languages used to program them.
>
>It was a German that invented binary, so my suggestion is to devolve all
>future decisions to the Germans.
Binary coding is not affected by changes in case so this argument is
bogus.
I think that both Rowan Collins & I agree on that point. We were commenting
on
your assertion:
>>Because the English-speaking world invented both computers and the
>>languages used to program them.
>
Thus because we are English speaking we do not have a special position to
dictate the development of computers and languages -- especially as it
affects
non-English speakers.
You are missing the point. The convention in the whole of the
English-speaking world is exactly the same - it has both upper and lower
case characters, and the meaning of a word does not change simply because
some characters are written in a different case. When a person searches for
a word in a dictionary he is not bothered about case. When a person searches
for a file in the Windows OS he is not bothered about case. When a person
searches for a word inside a file he is not bothered about case. I has seen
some search mechanisms which provide the option to make the search case
sensitive, but that is an option which has to be turned on - the default is
still case insensitive.
Can you show me any dictionary in ANY language where the same word has
different meanings just by changing the case of one or more characters?
Can you show me any language where a single character has multiple
alternatives when switching case?
By my reckoning case insensitivity has been the default way before computers
were invented, and all the software on the early computers was also case
insensitive. I have worked on numerous hardware platforms since the 1970s,
and they were ALL case insensitive.
--
Tony Marston
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