Mmmmh you didn' let me lurk very long did you ? :) Moreover, I have my
main PC going in pieces, so I'll try & be concise.
(FYI mangled refers to the discussion at the bottom of
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/CapitalizationStandardFrench)
First, I want to precise that french is my mother tongue, and that I'm
litterate (so you better hear my arguments - and excuse my weak english-).
I my everyday typing, I put my proudness into having a correct grammar &
orthography. Now for these title caps rules, I thing they're not
pragmatic at all.
You quite well summed up my points. I'll add other ones, sometimes
previously quoted by others:
- for 1 release added according to these rules, you have maybe 10 added
in sentence mode (and unfortunately 5 in english caps mode)
- theses rules are so complex, we won't ever be able to make a
javascript guess case for them IMO.
- as WP says (read header of
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Conventions_typographiques),
these are no rules, and I'll add they're widely unused (and very
controversial and complex, read
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Wikip%C3%A9dia:Conventions_typographiques#TITRES).
I just looked at my bookshelves, the very rarely apply these rules. Most
of the time it's either all caps "AU PLAISIR DE DIEU", Gallimard / "Le
cri de la mouette", Laffont / Even a Goncourt and Medicis prize like "Le
testament français", Mercure de France". I can provide plenty of other
examples. The Wikipedia rules are rarely met (about 4% of my books).
- not only are they unused, they shock the eyes (mine at least), example
"Le Bon, la brute et le truand" is ugly IMO
So my proposal is to be pragmatic and use rules that are
- simple to understand (& implement in the guess case applet, actually,
it's done actually - save for proper nouns obviously)
- easy to apply, enforce & correct
- used by the vast majority in the real world (bookshelves & MB
especially) - sorry for the small percentage of data on MB that you
might have modded to these rules.
My proposal, as on the wiki, is:
Put in upper case (capitale)
* the first letter of a title ("Crache ton venin", "Un autre
monde", "Le bon, la brute et le truand")
* the first letter of proper nouns ("Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie
Poulain")
* while respecting author intent ("eXistenZ", "amaroK")
MLL
Mangled a écrit :
Hi!
MLL recently opened-up the can of worms again :p, so I guess it's a
good time to sort it out.
It was a bit messy and I guess I wasn't specially kind myself, given I
first thought MLL was simply trying to override styleguide to his own
tastes, which he definitely wasn't.
No hard feelings MLL? ;)
So, I'm taking on the hassle to try to sum up here what has been said,
and what could be done.
First, for these not really familiar with it:
a) French capitalization simply follows sentence mode cap: only the
first letter of the sentence is capped (and the first letter of proper
nouns of course).
b) In the case the title *is not* a verbal phrase and matches one of
the two following schemes, we cap all the words of the scheme:
"adjective noun"
"definite article, [[adverb], adjective], noun" ([] denotes an
optional element in the scheme).
MLL (and others) propose to discard b), and just stick with sentence
mode cap for every case (but artist intent).
Arguments are:
a - the "exceptions" are complex to understand
b - ambiguous
c - counter-intuitive
d - silly
e - most people don't use them, as they don't understand them
f - there has been some discussion at wikipedia about them, so they
are not really a consensus
It's a known fact I feel strongly again that removal proposition :D,
so I won't state my arguments right now, but rather wait and give a
chance to MLL (or others) to precise their point more specifically if
I didn't sum it properly.
Regards,
- Olivier (a.k.a. dmppanda)
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