On 7/28/06, Mangled <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
2006/7/27, Bogdan Butnaru <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> (I'll say that again: I don't advocate simplifying anything. I
> advocate simplifying whenever there is no good reason to do it the
> hard way.
The good reason to do it the hard way is that it's common practice
with books, especially with the well known La Pléiade collection (I
repeat: common, not universal, as stated by MLL, there are other
editors that use different rules).
Some other editors don't do it, true, and there are other schemes, but
I think the simple "sentence mode" is simply the bad choice.
I'm still not getting through to you: the reason you gave is not
really a "good reason":
1) the first thing, we're not a books database, but a music database.
Even the fact that _all_ we do is titles (as opposed to a title every
several thousand words, as in a book), is a _very_ good argument for
simplicity.
2) you said it yourself "it's common practice with [...] especially
the well known La Pléiade collection" — that's a really bad argument,
because the same can be said about sentence case, for example. That
one is common too, I'm quite sure. Even so, I really doubt we use the
exact same rules as them.
I for one think our current set of rules is elegant while not being
outrageously complex, and if it's not the full shebang set of rules,
it's enough to have something decently close to typographic usage.
The claim of being elegant is very disputable. First of all, it's a
personal prefference. Second, what's elegant on a leather-bound book
cover or as a chapter heading is not necessarily elegant as a
tracklisting or in a discography, for everyone else.
(Just for the record, I think the 'complex' version of the rules is
very ugly when applied to musicbrainz; that's a personal prefference.
It's not why I advocate changing the rules. The reason I advocate
changing the rules is that they're unfounded (only a relatively small
section of French users agree with them, as opposed to the
near-universality of English or German capitalization rules), and in
such a situation we should pick the simplest correct version. Note
that spelling is totally different: the correct French spelling is
accepted near-universally among the French users; even though some ask
for a reform, there is a nearly universally accepted set of existing
rules. This is decidedly not true for capitalization.)
-- Bogdan Butnaru — [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"I think I am a fallen star, I should wish on myself." – O.
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