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Welsh language - ISO-8859-1 or Unicode ?
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Welsh language - ISO-8859-1 or Unicode ? Simon 06-24-2008
Posted by Simon on June 24, 2008, 1:00 pm
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 Hello -

I'm working on a team that is planning to add Welsh language support to a
large existing IT system which is partially web-based and
English-language-only so far. I've heard that 2 characters in Welsh
(w-circumflex and y-circumflex) are not supported in our default ISO-8859-1
character set, so a partial move to Unicode for internal storage of text
might be required.

I haven't yet found a Welsh-language website that uses these 2 characters,
so are they actually used much in Welsh? Is not supporting them likely to
cause problems?

Thanks



Posted by Simon on June 24, 2008, 1:09 pm
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> Hello -
>
> I'm working on a team that is planning to add Welsh language support to a
> large existing IT system which is partially web-based and
> English-language-only so far. I've heard that 2 characters in Welsh
> (w-circumflex and y-circumflex) are not supported in our default
ISO-8859-1
> character set, so a partial move to Unicode for internal storage of text
> might be required.
>
> I haven't yet found a Welsh-language website that uses these 2 characters,
> so are they actually used much in Welsh? Is not supporting them likely to
> cause problems?
>
> Thanks
>

I've just found a webpage that uses y-circumflex at the end of the third
paragraph, so it can't be that uncommon:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/welsh/hi/newsid_7460000/newsid_7462500/7462534.stm

This webpage uses ISO-8859-1 with entities for the y-circumflex. Using
entities would be very messy in my application, so if support for these
characters is needed, I would have to go for Unicode.
I guess my question still is: would not supporting these 2 characters be
considered bad practice for a Welsh-language business application?



Posted by Geoff Berrow on June 24, 2008, 7:44 pm
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contained the following:

>
>Unfortunately (for me) that webpage uses character entities to represent the
>characters outside ISO-8859-1. This isn't really a workable approach for me,
>because the text I'm displaying will be stored and processed in various
>databases and applications (web and non-web). I will probably end up storing
>and processing the data using UCS-2 or similar and generating webpages in
>UTF-8.


Surely you can add the character entities using a script when the pages
are generated?
--
Geoff Berrow 0110001001101100010000000110
001101101011011001000110111101100111001011
100110001101101111001011100111010101101011

Posted by anahata on June 25, 2008, 3:40 am
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On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:15:48 +0100, Simon wrote:

>
> I will probably
> end up storing and processing the data using UCS-2 or similar and
> generating webpages in UTF-8.

I'll add my vote for UTF-8 as the way to go if there's a choice. Either
way there'll be some problems but UTF-8 is likely to be more future-proof
in the long run.

Oh, and I have encountered the need for a w with circumflex, but that was
an old song title so it might have been an archaic Welsh form.

--
Anahata
anahata@treewind.co.uk ==//== 01638 720444
http://www.treewind.co.uk ==//== http://www.myspace.com/maryanahata


Posted by Dr J R Stockton on June 25, 2008, 3:48 pm
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In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html message <kv6dnRvtYfLOa_zVnZ2dnUVZ
8hednZ2d@posted.plusnet>, Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:40:03, anahata
>
>Oh, and I have encountered the need for a w with circumflex, but that was
>an old song title so it might have been an archaic Welsh form.

A search for "Welsh Water" rapidly locates <http://www.welshwater.com/>,
in the foot of which is "Dwr Cymru Cyf 2008." Copy'n'paste into here
has not reproduced the circumflex over the w; but graphic copy'n'paste
into Paint, zoomed, reveals it well.

See also <http://www.dwrcymru.co.uk/Welsh/Contactus/index.asp>, or
<http://cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafan>.

ISTM unlikely that the Welsh could manage without their word for water.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London UK. replyYYWW merlyn demon co uk Turnpike 6.05.
Web <URL:http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/tsfaq.html> -> Timo Salmi: Usenet Q&A.
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/news-use.htm> : about usage of News.
No Encoding. Quotes precede replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Mail no News.

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