Re: Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
GOTO Masanori wrote: At Mon, 29 Mar 2004 04:23:37 -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote: as a German native speaker with some interest on typography but virtually no knowledge on UTF-8 some comments: The common quotes in German today are double open quotes (low position) U201E together with double closed quote (high position) U201C The current conversion ,,text looks strange because the opening quotes don't match the closing quotes. I would make an effort to avoid any conversion which is asymmetrical in length, for any language, actually. I hate when info documents say ``foo, for instance... So are ,,text'' and ``foo'' reasonable? Well, although I said no, I admit that they are better than ,,text and ``foo, because they don't have the asymmetry... They are unreasonable, however, for *different* reasons. In English, foo should be used when curly quotes are unavailable, not ``foo''. (` and ' make a crummy pair of quotes, even though TeX uses them.) In German, foo (or was it foo ?) should be used when the curly quotes are unavailable (using real guillemets, not greater-than and less-than signs), as all the Germans were saying. ,,text'' might be reasonable if the guillemets aren't available, but foo (or was it foo?) might be better because it's less likely to be confusing -- and foo might be the best of all, because it's almost certainly not confusing. The point is that retaining meaning should take priority over retaining appearance. The current conversions attempt to retain a sort of parody of the appearance, but are worse at retaining meaning than the alternative suggested conversions. Imagine if the default conversion for kanji and kana was ASCII art, and you'll get an idea of why the current conversion just seems wrong (though it isn't *that* bad). -- Make sure your vote will count. http://www.verifiedvoting.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
At Mon, 29 Mar 2004 04:23:37 -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote: as a German native speaker with some interest on typography but virtually no knowledge on UTF-8 some comments: The common quotes in German today are double open quotes (low position) U201E together with double closed quote (high position) U201C The current conversion ,,text looks strange because the opening quotes don't match the closing quotes. I would make an effort to avoid any conversion which is asymmetrical in length, for any language, actually. I hate when info documents say ``foo, for instance... So are ,,text'' and ``foo'' reasonable? Regards, -- gotom -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
GOTO Masanori wrote: At Mon, 29 Mar 2004 04:23:37 -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote: as a German native speaker with some interest on typography but virtually no knowledge on UTF-8 some comments: The common quotes in German today are double open quotes (low position) U201E together with double closed quote (high position) U201C The current conversion ,,text looks strange because the opening quotes don't match the closing quotes. I would make an effort to avoid any conversion which is asymmetrical in length, for any language, actually. I hate when info documents say ``foo, for instance... So are ,,text'' and ``foo'' reasonable? ,,foo'' might be somewhat reasonable. ``foo'' is non-sense, as it's neither correct German syntax, nor elegant. Why not just use foo? It's not exactly correct German syntax either, but I'm pretty sure every German linguistics expert who has an understanding of character sets will agree that foo is way better than ,,foo'' or even ``foo''. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 GOTO Masanori wrote: | At Mon, 29 Mar 2004 04:23:37 -0500, | Nathanael Nerode wrote: | |as a German native speaker with some interest on typography but |virtually no knowledge on UTF-8 some comments: | |The common quotes in German today are | double open quotes (low position) U201E |together with | double closed quote (high position) U201C | |The current conversion | ,,text |looks strange because the opening quotes don't match the closing |quotes. | |I would make an effort to avoid any conversion which is asymmetrical in |length, for any language, actually. I hate when info documents say ``foo, |for instance... | | | So are ,,text'' and ``foo'' reasonable? In my opinion? No. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAbfujRGZ0aC4lkIIRAjt5AJ0bG/LTIk8KtBkFQ/foTxVMbhBYiQCfb57J lv4D4mYi4UZFsD2wmwGFy/c= =SnXW -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 11:36:25PM +0900, GOTO Masanori wrote: At Mon, 29 Mar 2004 04:23:37 -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote: as a German native speaker with some interest on typography but virtually no knowledge on UTF-8 some comments: The common quotes in German today are double open quotes (low position) U201E together with double closed quote (high position) U201C The current conversion ,,text looks strange because the opening quotes don't match the closing quotes. I would make an effort to avoid any conversion which is asymmetrical in length, for any language, actually. I hate when info documents say ``foo, for instance... So are ,,text'' and ``foo'' reasonable? There is already a patch in http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc-0403/msg00177.html If it gets rejected, could you please explain why? Denis -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 01:00:20AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 11:02:11PM +0200, Denis Barbier wrote: On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 02:47:42AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: [...] I am a bit surprised that this discussion and all patches sent only cover de_DE, although there are altogether three common de_ locales plus two others the locales package supports. If you fix this issue, it should be properly fixed for all de_ locales. All de_* locales include (either directly or indirectly) de_DE in their LC_CTYPE section, so this change propagates to all de_* locales. Thanks for the explanation. This means only cases like the different quote in the Swiss locale need to be handled. According to http://people.debian.org/~barbier/intl/l10n/po/ there is currently no package in Debian with de_CH messages. As French quotes are quite common in German catalogs (e.g. they are used in all GNOME packages), this means that de_CH users are currently seeing lots of 'reversed' quotes. And of course ,, transliteration ;) I read your message as: the proposed patch is an improvement for all German speaking people, but may be even improved for de_CH folks, but note that glibc maintainers seem reluctant to apply the requested changes and may have a different reading of your message. Denis -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 11:02:11PM +0200, Denis Barbier wrote: On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 02:47:42AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: [...] I am a bit surprised that this discussion and all patches sent only cover de_DE, although there are altogether three common de_ locales plus two others the locales package supports. If you fix this issue, it should be properly fixed for all de_ locales. All de_* locales include (either directly or indirectly) de_DE in their LC_CTYPE section, so this change propagates to all de_* locales. Thanks for the explanation. This means only cases like the different quote in the Swiss locale need to be handled. Denis cu Adrian -- Is there not promise of rain? Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. Only a promise, Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
Adrian Bunk wrote: Hi, as a German native speaker with some interest on typography but virtually no knowledge on UTF-8 some comments: The common quotes in German today are double open quotes (low position) U201E together with double closed quote (high position) U201C The current conversion ,,text looks strange because the opening quotes don't match the closing quotes. I would make an effort to avoid any conversion which is asymmetrical in length, for any language, actually. I hate when info documents say ``foo, for instance... French quotes are relatively uncommon in today's German. If you use them, you also have to be aware that in Swiss German the French closed quotes are used as opening quotes and vice versa. Books still seem to be published with the quotes, some of the time anyway, though I don't think I've seen them in any less formal writing. Just a data point. ;-) Intuitively, I'd have used the English quotes if German quotes are not available. I am a bit surprised that this discussion and all patches sent only cover de_DE, although there are altogether three common de_ locales plus two others the locales package supports. If you fix this issue, it should be properly fixed for all de_ locales. cu Adrian -- Make sure your vote will count. http://www.verifiedvoting.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 02:47:42AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: [...] I am a bit surprised that this discussion and all patches sent only cover de_DE, although there are altogether three common de_ locales plus two others the locales package supports. If you fix this issue, it should be properly fixed for all de_ locales. All de_* locales include (either directly or indirectly) de_DE in their LC_CTYPE section, so this change propagates to all de_* locales. Denis -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#235759: Comentar on which replacement for German quotes
Hi, as a German native speaker with some interest on typography but virtually no knowledge on UTF-8 some comments: The common quotes in German today are double open quotes (low position) U201E together with double closed quote (high position) U201C The current conversion ,,text looks strange because the opening quotes don't match the closing quotes. French quotes are relatively uncommon in today's German. If you use them, you also have to be aware that in Swiss German the French closed quotes are used as opening quotes and vice versa. Intuitively, I'd have used the English quotes if German quotes are not available. I am a bit surprised that this discussion and all patches sent only cover de_DE, although there are altogether three common de_ locales plus two others the locales package supports. If you fix this issue, it should be properly fixed for all de_ locales. cu Adrian -- Is there not promise of rain? Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. Only a promise, Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
