I am back after a 2 years break

A lot has happend in the past two years. Our library upgraded some of the useful information that assists users to access information in non-Latin scripts on the Internet. I am proud to say that my help pages have been translated into some 24 languages that are now accessibel on the NewsConnect site: http://newsconnect.torontopubliclibrary.ca/languages/


Also with the help of colleagues, in particular Mary-Beth and Mary we have developed instructions on how to change the keyboard layout on Windows computers in order to type in languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Greeek, Korean, Hindi, and others that have been enabled on Toronto Public Library's computers.

Syndication practice

I am trying to have a BBC Feed on this post

Test of Blogger's compatibility with Unicode

To make sure this blog will be a relevant discussion tool for its topic I will try to write a few words using German, French, Russian, Czech, Chinese and other samples.

1 German: Manche Mädchen mögen Blüten auf den Hüten

2 French: ça va jusque à la soirée

3 Russian: Яблоко - фрукт

4 Сzech: Jiří Jelašič český

5. Chinese: 拼音

6. Japanese: 蝶々

7. Hebrew:שר

Im delighted that Blogger has no problems of accepting input in these languages and evidently is Unicode compatible. I could have found this information by looking it up in Blogger's Help menu but by testing it I get more satisfaction. However, I posted this message from my Windows 2000 computer at work and when I later looked at it on my home computer that runs with an "ancient" Windows ME operating system the Japanese and Chinese characters were replaced by rectangular boxes. In other words, if you have problems to view text in other languages on your computer the best thing you can do is getting the latest operating system such as Windows XP. Windows versions older than Windows 2000 are not Unicode-based and will therefore more likely have problems displaying languages with characters in non-Latin script

On my 60th birthday in Baden (CH) 

The Web and Multilingualism

Until the early 90ies the Internet was an unilingual communication tool for the great majority of users. This has very much changed in the past decade and the development of international encoding standards particularly Unicode and integrated or plug-in software have enabled the Internet to become an polyphone instrument of multilingual and multicultural exchange