> And finally, I learned about the difference between traditional
(tategaki)
and modern (yokogaki) ordering in Japanese today! I'd always wondered
why
I was confused about that (looking at Japanese text from different
sources)
but never got around to looking it up. So thanks for that :).
Your Arabic thing also solves my problem of trying to write a piece of text
in Japanese that makes sense when read in both directions the language can
be read.
天火狐
On 2 July 2017 at 15:12, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, 2 Jul 2017, omd wrote:
> > First of all, I'd like to note that Gmail displays the message
> > differently from ais523's images. I see
> > {
> > [arabic text] : I call for judgement on the following statement
> > }
>
> Some evidence, and some commentary:
>
> First the gratuitous evidence for the record:
>
> I composed the message in a fixed-width font. It appears for me, both in
> composition and in the message as received from the lists, the way it
> appears
> in the archives (using a reasonably-wide window), a single line with
> [Latin] : [Arabic]
>
> https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/
> agora-business/2017-June/035191.html
>
> As "evidence", a note on my intent: I had intended it to be
> center-justified,
> with the center as close to the colon as possible. I thought about
> indenting it slightly on the left side to show that the intent to center
> it,
> but since the line was already beyond 80 characters, I wanted to minimize
> the
> chance across others' displays that it would wrap, so I didn't add the
> extra
> space. My editor and reader don't wrap until >120.
>
>
> Now some commentary (not official gratuitous arguments):
>
> - We have a tradition of fixed-width displays, to the extent that we make
> our reports and other legal documents (tables) that way. If tables
> don't
> display correctly, we tend to say "switch to a fixed width browser"
> not "we
> have to go by the quirks of individuals' mail clients".
>
> - Not sure we've had a set standard on line length (differs by report),
> out
> of politeness definitely under 80. That's the acknowledged weakness
> of my
> single line.
>
> - Still, within the Rules we respect the authors' intent with ASCII art
> (and
> would frown at a rulekeepor who squeezed out the linespace in the Town
> Fountain as "inconsequential"). Of course, we've never used such
> positioning to make a legal distinction.
>
> - In questions where it matters, it might be great to use this case to
> set
> a precedent. The one I would suggest is "the way it displays in the
> archives is the canonical form" (without getting into whether the
> Distributor could mess with that one day :) ).
>
> - And yes, I also acknowledge that narrowing the window when looking at
> the
> archives causes a line wrap - but the same is true for report tables.
> It's not an unreasonable hardship (IMO) to say "in doubt, view it in
> the
> archives with a window width sufficient to respect the author's fairly
> clear intent."
>
> That's all commentary on display, bytes, etc. Now, assuming others are
> willing to judge it linguistically, as displayed on the archives with a
> sufficient window width (~90 characters are more):
>
> - A main point for me is interpretation of the word "following". I
> believe
> that a native Arabic-speaker would read "following" in the Arabic
> sentence as the thing past the colon (the Latin text), but I don't have
> a native-speaker on hand to ask.
>
> - I think that CFJ 1267 and its two(!) appeals are the best discussion of
> using fixed-width "ASCII" art uncertainty to look at timing of actions.
> Definitely worth a look, including the controversy caused shown in the
> appeals: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?1267
>
> - Finally, since I kind of amped-up the emotion on this one, let me say I
> wouldn't be insulted if the whole thing was thrown out as ambiguous, or
> any particular interpretation (even favoring the Latin over the
> Arabic),
> as long as it's done on linguistic grounds and hopefully in a way that
> can apply to other/all languages similarly, or cover the mixing of
> multiple languages.
>
> - And finally, I learned about the difference between traditional
> (tategaki)
> and modern (yokogaki) ordering in Japanese today! I'd always wondered
> why
> I was confused about that (looking at Japanese text from different
> sources)
> but never got around to looking it up. So thanks for that :).
>
>
>
>
