[WEB4LIB] RE: multi language support

[Bob Rasmussen]

Ah, a favorite topic of mine! How high a priority is it for your library to
serve multilingual (or "other-lingual") patrons? As others have mentioned,
this covers several areas.

WEB BROWSERS AND NON-ENGLISH SITES

Because the HTML standards have grown well beyond ASCII, the major browsers
have gradually improved their multilingual support. I am most familiar with
IE; IE5 has added considerable multilingual support (as have Windows 2000 and
Office 2000). Here are some of the issues:

* If the web page indicates its encoding, can the browser recognize it, and
display it using an appropriate font?

* If the web page does NOT indicate its encoding (many do not), is it easy for
the user to configure it (and will it revert to Latin1 for the next user)?

* Are there adequate fonts on the PC?

* Can the browser and platform handle bidirectional scripts (Arabic and
Hebrew)?

* Can the browser and platform handle "complex" scripts (Arabic, Vietnamese,
etc.)?

* Is there a way of keying in non-native characters, particularly CJK? CJK
generally involves an Input Method Editor, which might be part of the platform
(Windows 2000), an add-on from Microsoft (Global IME), or a third-party add-on
(UnionWay, WinMass).

I believe that with IE5, even on a US-English installation of Win98, all the
above items are possible WITHOUT addons from third parties. However...

LIBRARY SITES, SPECIFICALLY

The standard in libraries, for CJK, is called variously ISO Z39.64, CCCII, and
EACC. Some catalog systems (e.g., Innopac) can output in this encoding. But
this is not a standard that is part of the HTML spec, and so browsers do not
recognize it. Therefore, an add-on such as UnionWay or WinMass is necessary.

Also, there is not a one-to-one relationship between EACC and Unicode, due to
EACC's concept of variant forms.

YOUR LIBRARY'S CATALOG

I believe that the USMARC standard includes the ability to store a
"vernacular" author and title, in addition to the Romanized form. So in that
standard, at least, you would not necessarily lose information when batch
posting from OCLC or RLG, subject, of course, to the restrictions imposed by
your particular catalog software.

If your library has a web interface, it would be educational to have someone
who is natively Czech, Chinese, Arabic, etc. browse it, while you watch over
their shoulder. Pull a Chinese book off the shelf, and see if they can find it
on the system. Also, look at the HTML source put out by your system. Does it
indicate encoding? Does it indicate language?

TELNET ACCESS

Not everything is done through a web interface. Some catalog systems actually
do a fairly good job of outputing CJK in a telnet interface. Of course you
need a telnet that can handle that. Anzio (our product) can, not only for CJK
but for various European languages, Hebrew, and Arabic. See web site for more.

MY SOAPBOX

The library community was once a leader in multilingual computerization. My
sense is that it is rapidly falling behind. The Unicode standard represents a
tremendous opportunity to move librarianship forward into much more
all-encompassing language support. However, there seems to be very little
interaction between the library industry and the Unicode organization. At the
last Unicode conference, I found only 3 people from the library
industry (I'm not counting myself). Check out <http://www.unicode.org>.

Again, how high a priority is serving your non-English patrons?

-- 
Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
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