Only programmers from English-speaking countries like ASCII. There are millions of us living in other countries who are thankful that Unicode exists, and who are constantly annoyed that a some of our tools don't support it well enough.

As someone who grew up bilingual in a country where it's not uncommon for people to speak three or more languages, I hate the idea of being prevented from using one of the languages I speak while doing my job. Especially when I'm building products that eventually get translated into five or six different languages, all using different scripts.

This is one reason I prefer using GUI applications over CLI applications: Unicode support is terrible across terminals and CLI apps, while most of the commonly used GUI frameworks are okay.

If your app has no issues rendering हैकर न्यूज़ (Hacker News), then it should have no issues rendering Emoji. If your app cannot render that bit of Hindi text, then the problem is your app and not Unicode.

As a non-native English programmer, I disagree. I love ASCII despite it lacking many characters from my own language. Sometimes Instead of the Ç I expect, I'll get a Chinese character. What do you do then? Well you switch to an ASCII-only mode and debug the encoding by looking at the bytes. You go one level of abstraction lower than the unicode.

The ability to do that is precious.

> If your app has no issues rendering हैकर न्यूज़ (Hacker News), then it should have no issues rendering Emoji

First, that's not true. Many fonts have partial support or an app may have an issue with displaying mutli-colored glyphs. There are many possibilities for this partial failure.

> then the problem is your app and not Unicode.

Yes. Precisely. I don't think unicode or emojis are problematic per se. But they belong to a higher layer than the one a lot of (non-web) programmers spend their times in. Unicode support is HARD. ASCII support is easy. Making ASCII tools is easy and promises an ecosystem full of useful tools.

> This is one reason I prefer using GUI applications over CLI applications: Unicode support is terrible across terminals and CLI apps, while most of the commonly used GUI frameworks are okay.

And that's fine, but realize that by doing so, you depend on a layer that relies on an ASCII layer. Tools that require unicode can't be used there.

As a person from another country speaking not-english, I just switch all my devices to english nowadays.

I think this is more common than the HN crowd assumes.

As someone who develops multi-lingual web sites, I can say that the vast majority of the people who visit the sites and then request a language other than English still have their computer/browser configured for English.

Same here. At least when I get an error message, I can google for a solution. Good luck with localized messages.

That's the main reason all my devices are set to english.

And imagine how much programming and debugging effort could be saved worldwide if everyone did as you and I do.

This is completely absurd. English is my only language but I would never hope for something like this. We're not supposed to cater to the needs of our tools; we're supposed to make technology cater to our needs. Following your logic to its natural conclusion, think about how much programming and debugging effort could be saved worldwide if we just stopped using machines and their features altogether.

As a counterexample, when I open some lib's repo and see comments in code are non-english, I just close it and don't use the lib. Not because I'm a racist, mind you, but because it complicates trying to understand/modify it by unreasonable amount of time. When I'm working I have to deal with spec requirements in other languages too, which is also troublesome. I kinda agree with gp on this, things would be much, much simpler.

Reminds me of the time when StarOffice became OpenOffice. As StarOffice was developed in germany all the comments where in german. This hindered development for several years when the project became more international before alls comments where translated by volunteers.

You learn the language to communicate with everyone else on the planet. Computers are tools for manipulating and transferring information so spend time learning their language. Instead of wasting colossal effort catering to needs of everyone let everyone spend some time learning the language of everyone else.

Yes, also my problem is not understanding every language in the world and how to use a Chinese keyboard to type this in. (Yes, I know this is not, I'm being facetious. OP probably cannot use it either. If not, substitute 3-bulsik Korean.)

The one thing English has going for it is the ease of typing it on any keyboard everywhere. Romanizations are fine too. Heck, even Russian is a bit problematic. Much more CJK, Hebrew, Arabic and Indian languages.

Emoji are easier to type in.

> The one thing English has going for it is the ease of typing it on any keyboard everywhere.

Is that an inherent property of English, or because we haven't invested enough effort into making non-English keyboards better?

Here's an interesting bit of data: ever since Google added support for Hindi in Google Assistant, it has become the second most used language used for voice search globally [1]. I don't know about other countries, but there's definitely a demand for non-English languages on computers in India.

> Romanizations are fine too.

No they're not. It implies you have knowledge of two separate languages, two separate writing systems, and the ability to convert between them. This is not always the case. People do write Romanized Hindi (and Tamil, Kannada, etc) in India, but that has more to do with the lack of native keyboards than anything else. With the rise of mobile devices, more people are writing Indian languages in their native scripts, thanks of the excellent work Google and Apple have done with their keyboards.

I'm as much a native English speaker as I am a Hindi speaker, and I'm entirely unwilling to accept a worse experience for either of these languages on my devices. Language is part of people's identities, and you can't really divorce language from script without losing something of its character in the process. People across the world have protested and rioted for their right to use their own languages. Governments are elected based on language issues. Supporting your target audience's primary language is part of your job as a good engineer, whether your target audience is non-tech people or other developers.

Where is this unwillingness to support multiple languages in software coming from, anyway?

[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/hindi-sec...

> Is that an inherent property of English, or because we haven't invested enough effort into making non-English keyboards better?

It is an inherent property of English, at least in some way. English doesn't use diacritics or letters like the German "ß". It is the least common denominator of western languages.

AFAIK, languages that don't have English letters use an entirely different script, and considering that most programming languages, command lines, etc... use English, you need to be able to write English in addition to your native language.

English also have the interesting property that it is really simple to render, which makes it ideal for embedded software, low resolution screens, etc... Chinese a much too complicated, and even Hindi requires you to combine things.

> Is that [ease of typing it on any keyboard] an inherent property of English, or because we haven't invested enough effort into making non-English keyboards better?

Not of English inherently, more a feature of a language that uses a small set of symbols with many different combinations. The simplest and easiest approach is to give each button a symbol; it's also typically faster than typing on, say, some sort of touch-input keyboard. I agree that there is demand, but English still makes sense for development.

> People do write Romanized Hindi... in India, but that has more to do with the lack of native keyboards than anything else.

And I am stuck using SI units for science, even though I have a preference for American units. Compatibility is important, and as you just stated, people have adapted.

> Where is this unwillingness to support multiple languages in software coming from, anyway?

Immense difficulty for minimal return. About two months ago, and article was posted about just how difficult it can be: https://gankra.github.io/blah/text-hates-you/

Even if many programmers aren't dealing directly with the rendering, UI design is a huge pain. Coupled with the fact that many countries with languages more difficult to support have fewer users, it can be a simple business decision.

I can see why a consumer-friendly interface probably should have multi-lingual support (especially if it has a large, non-English user-base), but development tooling operates at a lower level where more computer-friendly representations are necessary. It also has to be able to all work together under the hood, which requires a common language. English ended up the lingua franca, partly because computers were developed largely in America and partly because English text happens to simply be easier to represent than other languages, at least for computers.

Not to mention that transliterations aren't standardised (or rather, there are competing standards, and casually/colloquially people don't use any of them).

Even popular films released with Latin-alphabet names don't use the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) for example.

It makes it hard as someone learning Hindi, because I might read or someone tells it's spelt 'k, u, l', but actually it's 'ka, la', i.e. kal or कल (yesterday/tomorrow) for example.

(And that's a common example, becauss IAST uses 'a' for inherent vowel, but many people write 'u', which is arguably often closer to the right sound if read as English, but that's probably not a high priority goal of IAST.)

We're talking about programmers; they have to be able to type english words because almost every language uses english keywords and most command line tools use english, etc. Since everyone has to be able to type english words, why add new character sets to the requirements?

I'm not from an English-speaking country, but also like ASCII.

It works without setting $LANG, $LC_ALL, ':set enc=utf-8', 'use utf8' and who knows what else.

Ironically, you can't even write proper English in ASCII. It is missing many characters widely used in English text.

Amazon used to print my name with an HTML entity on the shipping labels.

Buggy software is buggy. Saying "who cares about accents?" only sweeps the problem under the rug.

Can you make a few examples?

I suppose emdash may count. Spellings like résumé or coöperate if you're fussy about that.

Though the New Yorker is an eminent institution, their usage is pretty uncommon. Definitely not “widely used.”

is "résumé" an English word?

EDIT: I guess then that also "café", "façade" and "señor" can retain their original spelling. The question is: where does it stop? will latin-1 suffice?

Latin-1 will definitely not suffice. And Unicode exists, and is near-universally supported and used. Just use it. It's ok. Really.

You most certainly can. a-z A-Z 0-9 and , . ? ! ; : - ' " ( ) should suffice in nearly all cases apart from anything hyper specialized. You could probably write the majority of all English literature with only those characters, and there's more characters I left off.

What other characters are "widely used" in English texts that are missing from ASCII

Accents and diacriticals are far from "hyper specialised", they are how many people are taught to write, and want to write.

And - is not a dash, it is a minus. It does not suffice as a replacement for a real en or em dash in a properly typeset text. This is also not "specialised", it is how English is correctly typeset.

And yet accents and diacritical marks are not widely used nor any longer exclusively "proper." You're fighting a losing battle. Language is changing underneath you, no matter how tightly you cling to it.

What battle are you referring to? A large majority of the world's population is speaking languages containing characters outside of ASCII. ASCII has no relevant future.

But this subthread is specifically about ASCII and English. So you point, while valid and true, is not relevant to this specific subthread.

I respectfully suggest you read my posts in this subthread because I don't believe you have. Instead, you appear to have taken my comment on accents in English completely out of context.

I did read the thread. It was about the irony that ASCII doesn't even cover English. Then you start to talk about a loosing battle. Still unclear which battle. Are you referring to the evolution of the English language into a language only using ASCII? Because if so that's completely off topic for the thread.

My name contains diacritics. Are you proposing that I should change my name? Because if so, that’s pretty condescending.

I can only think of no more than a few common English names that use diacritics, and most commonly drop them. Remember, this subthread spawned from discussing ASCII and English, not other languages.

I think you'd have to pretty deliberately misinterpret my comment about accents being uncommon in English to somehow think I was suggesting you change your name.

Source for claim many people are taught to use accents and diacriticals? Many people seem to have the opposite experience of being taught there are 26 unadorned letters in English.

How do I write a letter to my fiancé?

What do I do when I want to take a break and go to a café?

How can I write about that cornerstone of English myth and legend, Bēowulf?

Perhaps ASCII itself is to blame, but in my experience the first two spellings you list are less widely used than "fiance" and "cafe", respectively.

I wouldn't base a paper on it, but (fiancé versus fiance): https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fianc%C3%A9%2C...

café versus cafe: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=caf%C3%A9%2Cca...

I argue "Bēowulf" is does not fall under "widely used." Even my high school version of it it was printed "Beowulf." I'm not claiming "ASCII contains all characters used at all in English," just refuting the claim that you can't "write proper English" with ASCII and that it is missing "widely used" characters.

Perhaps ſubſtitute a different letter.

Why, when we can use a proper encoding that actually contains the letters you want to use?

You write just like everyone normally writes, by dropping the accent. I only see such spellings when people are trying to convey some sort of sophistication, rather than in casual, day-to-day use.

Precisely. Even when writing by hand, where there are no character encoding limitations, I've never seen anyone add the accents to "fiance" or "cafe" or "resume" when writing in English.

> I've never seen anyone add the accents to "fiance" or "cafe" or "resume" when writing in English.

We have café all the way from McDonalds up to Buckingham Palace.

https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/menu/mccafe.html

https://www.rct.uk/visit/the-state-rooms-buckingham-palace

"I only see such spellings when people are trying to convey some sort of sophistication"

McCafe and Buckingham Palace would want the "sophistication angle". Both spellings work obviously, but IMO (and the majority of English books) "cafe" is the "correct" spelling.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=caf%C3%A9%2Cca...

You've quoted me out of context. I was referring to handwriting. Besides, I would bet dropping the accent is more common than including it.

My first name is Émile. This is not some attempt at sophistication, it's just my name. It's kind of sad to see that even a simple accent like that is butchered by so many sites (I often see my name written as Ä©~mile)

Other languages figured out good compromises, e.g. Dostoyevsky is transliterated from Достоевский; the name of China's current dictator doesn't even render in my browser, but is transliterated to Jinping Xi. German passports have the German version for humans, and a standardized, transliterated version for computers. Gößmann becomes GOESSMANN. I see no reason why the same thing can't happen; just drop the accent from the E. Also, for some reason, my browser shows that E as having no accent, if you want an illustration of the problem.

A nitpick: Xi is his last name, but Chinese names are generally transliterated in the Chinese order of LAST FIRST ("Xi Jinping"). If you do a verbatim Google search for "Jinping Xi" you'll get around 500 results.

If a Chinese person adopts an English name, they'll put it first, however. Eg "Jake Ma".

it's weird that when i search for "cafe dictionary" in google all the dictionaries except the Oxford Learner's Dictionary spell it as "café"

And most dictionaries have something to the effect of:

Variants: cafe

I'd be surprised if any one of the 500ish English-language books on my shelves could be typeset entirely in ASCII without some compromises. Most are just fiction, too, and few could be characterized as "hyper specialized".

My system (windows 10) has no issues with Hindi, but doesn't always render emoji. That said, when Hindi started to exist and how many countries have emoji as an official language?

I was keying in my confirmation code into the self checkin machine to get my boarding pass the other day. The code was something like EFO123. Was that a letter or a digit? I got it wrong, fortunately the software said it interpreted 0 as O and gave me the ticket.

Now multiply this by a thousand with Unicode exact lookalike glyphs.

Emoji like those in this article don't have this issue though.

You can still have problems with them. They propose to ID a commit type by the first character.

Arabic is written from right to left. Which emoji is the first character of this sequence? It actually depends on the position of invisible LTR control characters.

علامة يمين-إلى-يسا

EDIT: BTW, HN does not support emojis apparently

I once had an issue where GTK-2 couldn't display any characters that were in ASCII/latin basic. It was down to Pango dropping support for the monospace font I used for that range of characters. In my opinion the most reliable part of your system is the part you put the most attention on. ASCII is only the most reliable if you choose to use it as the basis for your system and then ignore support for everything else.

Although I do agree the one character to one codepoint mapping of ASCII is useful, things like terminal escape codes already add a layer of complexity that makes it hard for me to imagine a scenario where you can't render U+1F4A9 but can still render things like ^[[31m found in almost every cli tool.