[mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
Recently a JIRA ticket I entered[1] about the Guess Case script was closed with the comment that I should take it to the style list. So: It seems to me that it would be good to reconsider the Miscellaneous Guideline[2] and the use of the characters it forbids. It’s been more than 5 years since the thread which added the ellipsis to the set of taboo characters[3]. Does the reasoning which held then still apply? Specifically: * Are there any Musicbrainz clients which cannot handle Unicode? * Is there any way that this could be corrected server side, perhaps by having clients specify a desired character set, which would allow the server to return appropriate substitutions such as " instead of “”? Or is this conversion better handled on the client side? * Is there any reason that this should apply only to such a limited subset of Unicode? Surely if a client or music player cannot handle “…” it would be equally unable to handle other “unusual” characters [4] or even more usual characters that happen to not be in Latin script. (see: tons of releases) * If we do want to restrict what characters should be allowed/disallowed, should that not be enforced with input validation rather than weakly suggested in a guideline and lightly enforced with Guess Case? If it’s definitely incorrect to use “…” then it should simply be disallowed, period(s). * The comments on the talk page for that guideline[5] lean strongly toward getting rid of these limitations. I don’t see anyone clearly arguing against allowing at least quotes. So, is there any reason that this part of the guideline should still stand? I know there are technical considerations such as search not handling certain special characters properly [6] but I don’t think they should stand in the way of full character support in Musicbrainz. Thanks for reading —Alex Mauer “hawke” 1. http://jira.musicbrainz.org/browse/MBS-991 2. http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Miscellaneous_Guideline 3. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.audio.musicbrainz.user/8524 4. http://musicbrainz.org/track/cadda978-35ca-4cea-a94e-a046c9bd75cb.html 5. http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Talk:Miscellaneous_Guideline 6. http://musicbrainz.org/search/oldsearch.html?type=label&query=Fogarty%E2%80%99s+Cove&handlearguments=1&oldsearch=1 ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On Fri, 2010-11-12 at 15:47 -0600, Alex Mauer wrote: > Recently a JIRA ticket I entered[1] about the Guess Case script was > closed with the comment that I should take it to the style list. So: > > It seems to me that it would be good to reconsider the Miscellaneous > Guideline[2] and the use of the characters it forbids. > > It’s been more than 5 years since the thread which added the ellipsis > to > the set of taboo characters[3]. Does the reasoning which held then > still apply? > > Specifically: > * Are there any Musicbrainz clients which cannot handle Unicode? Perhaps, but I assert that is is not relevant. There's a large number of titles in the MB database that purely depend on Unicode, and such clients would not cope with them either. I suggest that the onus on any Unicode transcoding should be on the client, not on the server. UTF-8 is pervasive. Every conceivable modern programming language and operating platform fully support Unicode in some form. > * Is there any way that this could be corrected server side, perhaps > by > having clients specify a desired character set, which would allow the > server to return appropriate substitutions such as " instead of “”? > Or > is this conversion better handled on the client side? Conversion is best handled on client side. That said, HTTP/1.1 has a negotiation mechanism to establish what encoding the client can handle. > * Is there any reason that this should apply only to such a limited > subset of Unicode? Surely if a client or music player cannot handle > “…” it would be equally unable to handle other “unusual” characters > [4] or even more usual characters that happen to not be in Latin > script. (see: tons of releases) Precisely. > * If we do want to restrict what characters should be > allowed/disallowed, should that not be enforced with input validation > rather than weakly suggested in a guideline and lightly enforced with > Guess Case? If it’s definitely incorrect to use “…” then it should > simply be disallowed, period(s). It's generally easier to change a wiki page than changing code, recompiling, testing, deploying. There are numerous places where you can technically violate guidelines without server enforcement. > * The comments on the talk page for that guideline[5] lean strongly > toward getting rid of these limitations. I don’t see anyone clearly > arguing against allowing at least quotes. I concur. > So, is there any reason that this part of the guideline should still > stand? In my opinion, the time is ripe to allow such characters. Paul > I know there are technical considerations such as search not handling > certain special characters properly [6] but I don’t think they should > stand in the way of full character support in Musicbrainz. > > Thanks for reading > —Alex Mauer “hawke” > > 1. http://jira.musicbrainz.org/browse/MBS-991 > 2. http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Miscellaneous_Guideline > 3. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.audio.musicbrainz.user/8524 > 4. > http://musicbrainz.org/track/cadda978-35ca-4cea-a94e-a046c9bd75cb.html > 5. http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Talk:Miscellaneous_Guideline > 6. > http://musicbrainz.org/search/oldsearch.html?type=label&query=Fogarty% > E2%80%99s+Cove&handlearguments=1&oldsearch=1 > > > ___ > MusicBrainz-style mailing list > MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org > http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 6:59 PM, Paul C. Bryan wrote: > On Fri, 2010-11-12 at 15:47 -0600, Alex Mauer wrote: > > Recently a JIRA ticket I entered[1] about the Guess Case script was > > closed with the comment that I should take it to the style list. So: > > > > It seems to me that it would be good to reconsider the Miscellaneous > > Guideline[2] and the use of the characters it forbids. > > > So, is there any reason that this part of the guideline should still > > stand? > > In my opinion, the time is ripe to allow such characters. > > Paul > > +1 to everything both Paul and Alex have said. Brian ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
+1 to the above, also. If we remove the miscellaneous guidelines, perhaps a switch could be added into the next version of Picard Tagger to automatically convert Unicode characters into the ASCII substitutes? -- View this message in context: http://musicbrainz-mailing-lists.2986109.n2.nabble.com/Ellipses-quotation-marks-and-the-miscellaneous-guideline-tp5734079p5734846.html Sent from the Style discussions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
+1 On Nov 12, 2010 7:42 PM, "Brian Schweitzer" wrote: On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 6:59 PM, Paul C. Bryan wrote: > > On Fri, 2010-11-12 at 1... > > > So, is there any reason that this part of the guideline should still > > stand? > > In my o... +1 to everything both Paul and Alex have said. Brian ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 6:37 AM, jacobbrett wrote: > > +1 to the above, also. > If we remove the miscellaneous guidelines, perhaps a switch could be added > into the next version of Picard Tagger to automatically convert Unicode > characters into the ASCII substitutes? > Yes, although that would require a translation table I think. Also, for most Unicode characters there isn't a good replacement... maybe you could write Chinese characters and characters from other non-latin scripts phonetically. Is there a big need for this? When we change the Guess Case script to remove this, perhaps we can go one step further and replace ... (three full stops) with … (ellipsis). Would that cause problems with many song titles, though? Would your proposal also be about the quotation marks? In that case, we might still need some style guidelines about whether to use the standard quotes or the enhanced versions, for example for the quotes surrounding the title in the classical style guidelines ( http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Classical_Track_Title_Partnumber_Style). Regards, Jeroen ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
Jeroen Latour wrote: > Yes, although that would require a translation table I think. Also, for > most Unicode characters there isn't a good replacement... maybe you > could write Chinese characters and characters from other non-latin > scripts phonetically. > Is there a big need for this? We already have pseudo-releases for things written in other scripts, e.g. http://musicbrainz.org/release/5193d964-d732-4d81-a99f-37f8e5bb14bb.html > Would your proposal also be about the quotation marks? Well, it does say "quotation marks" in the email subject. ;) Nikki ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
jacobbrett wrote: > +1 to the above, also. > If we remove the miscellaneous guidelines, perhaps a switch could be added > into the next version of Picard Tagger to automatically convert Unicode > characters into the ASCII substitutes? It could be done with a plugin now. http://pastebin.ca/1989878 seems to work for me, although I have no idea how fast it is. Nikki ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On 11/13/2010 2:30 AM, Jeroen Latour wrote: > Yes, although that would require a translation table I think. Also, for > most Unicode characters there isn't a good replacement... maybe you > could write Chinese characters and characters from other non-latin > scripts phonetically. > Is there a big need for this? libiconv can do it to some extent[1,2], though I'm not sure about a full transliteration such as Kanji to latin. It certainly appears to handle ellipses. Also not sure about portability for that. As nikki pointed out we have pseudo-releases and the "is a transliterated version of" AR. > When we change the Guess Case script to remove this, perhaps we can go > one step further and replace ... (three full stops) with … (ellipsis). > Would that cause problems with many song titles, though? That seems like a good idea to me. I can't think of any problems it would cause. > Would your proposal also be about the quotation marks? In that case, we > might still need some style guidelines about whether to use the standard > quotes or the enhanced versions, for example for the quotes surrounding > the title in the classical style guidelines > (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Classical_Track_Title_Partnumber_Style). Good call. I'm a fan of proper quotation marks, but I don't feel that strongly about it. I realize that I also failed to mention apostrophes; I think true apostrophes should be preferred. --Alex Mauer "hawke" 1. http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/documentation/libiconv/iconv_open.3.html 2. http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/encoding_conversion_with_iconv ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
Alex Mauer wrote: > > On 11/13/2010 2:30 AM, Jeroen Latour wrote: >> Yes, although that would require a translation table I think. Also, for >> most Unicode characters there isn't a good replacement... maybe you >> could write Chinese characters and characters from other non-latin >> scripts phonetically. >> Is there a big need for this? > > libiconv can do it to some extent[1,2], though I'm not sure about a full > transliteration such as Kanji to latin. It certainly appears to handle > ellipses. Also not sure about portability for that. > > As nikki pointed out we have pseudo-releases and the "is a > transliterated version of" AR. > >> When we change the Guess Case script to remove this, perhaps we can go >> one step further and replace ... (three full stops) with … (ellipsis). >> Would that cause problems with many song titles, though? > > That seems like a good idea to me. I can't think of any problems it > would cause. > >> Would your proposal also be about the quotation marks? In that case, we >> might still need some style guidelines about whether to use the standard >> quotes or the enhanced versions, for example for the quotes surrounding >> the title in the classical style guidelines >> (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Classical_Track_Title_Partnumber_Style). > > Good call. I'm a fan of proper quotation marks, but I don't feel that > strongly about it. I realize that I also failed to mention apostrophes; > I think true apostrophes should be preferred. > > --Alex Mauer "hawke" > > 1. > http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/documentation/libiconv/iconv_open.3.html > 2. http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/encoding_conversion_with_iconv > > > ___ > MusicBrainz-style mailing list > MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org > http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style > > I don't see why we shouldn't pull out all the stops, as many Unicode characters are semantically more appropriate than what is specified in the Misc. Guideline. It may lead to some mis-edits (incorrectly using one Unicode character over another), though perhaps a punctuation guide could added to edit pages that describes the usage case for similar marks: E.g. quotation marks: ‘ ’, prime/double prime (denotes measurement in feet): ′ ″, typewriter apostrophe (general symbol, used for previous cases + more, should be deprecated): '. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Computing. Additionally, a "guess case" type script could be developed to correct usage, though only where it is nearly certain as to the meaning, e.g. 5'5" becomes 5′5″. -- View this message in context: http://musicbrainz-mailing-lists.2986109.n2.nabble.com/Ellipses-quotation-marks-and-the-miscellaneous-guideline-tp5734079p5736665.html Sent from the Style discussions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
Hi Alex, On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Alex Mauer wrote: > > Would your proposal also be about the quotation marks? In that case, we > > might still need some style guidelines about whether to use the standard > > quotes or the enhanced versions, for example for the quotes surrounding > > the title in the classical style guidelines > > (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Classical_Track_Title_Partnumber_Style). > > Good call. I'm a fan of proper quotation marks, but I don't feel that > strongly about it. I realize that I also failed to mention apostrophes; > I think true apostrophes should be preferred. > I agree, but I am concerned about the ease of entering those quotes. If I'm not mistaken, most browsers will enter plain quotes in input fields. Can Guess Case convert them reliably, or do we need another way to support entering the right apostrophes? Regards, Jeroen ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On 11/15/2010 9:05 AM, Jeroen Latour wrote: > I agree, but I am concerned about the ease of entering those quotes. If > I'm not mistaken, most browsers will enter plain quotes in input fields. > Can Guess Case convert them reliably, or do we need another way to > support entering the right apostrophes? Wikipedia gives several methods for entering apostrophes on various OSes[1]. I know it misses out on at least two for Linux, those being [Compose], [>], ['] and [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[u], 8-2-1-7. A similar guide exists for quotation marks[2] and ellipses[3]. The difficulty of entering them as well as the fact that some of the easier methods are not common knowledge and not necessarily enabled by default are part of the reason I think we should be fairly lax in our preference for proper typographical quotes. It will do no good to require them if it drives away people who can't be bothered. But it would probably be good to have edits which change from the less-preferred method to the more-preferred method to be autoedits, much like edits that only change capitalization now. --Alex Mauer "hawke" 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Computing 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Typing_quotation_marks_on_a_computer_keyboard 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis#Computer_representations ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Jeroen Latour wrote: > Hi Alex, > > On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Alex Mauer wrote: > >> > Would your proposal also be about the quotation marks? In that case, we >> > might still need some style guidelines about whether to use the standard >> > quotes or the enhanced versions, for example for the quotes surrounding >> > the title in the classical style guidelines >> > (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Classical_Track_Title_Partnumber_Style). >> >> Good call. I'm a fan of proper quotation marks, but I don't feel that >> strongly about it. I realize that I also failed to mention apostrophes; >> I think true apostrophes should be preferred. >> > > I agree, but I am concerned about the ease of entering those quotes. If I'm > not mistaken, most browsers will enter plain quotes in input fields. Can > Guess Case convert them reliably, or do we need another way to support > entering the right apostrophes? > > Regards, > Jeroen > > This has come up when we were talking about elipses, hyphens, and quotes a couple of years ago when dealing with Clean up CSG. I'd suggest that the same principle talked about then should be allowed here too. Prefer the correct characters, but don't bar the use of basic ASCII characters. Brian ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 16:03 -0500, Brian Schweitzer wrote: > > > On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Jeroen Latour > wrote: > Hi Alex, > > On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Alex Mauer > wrote: > > Would your proposal also be about the quotation > marks? In that case, we > > might still need some style guidelines about whether > to use the standard > > quotes or the enhanced versions, for example for the > quotes surrounding > > the title in the classical style guidelines > > > > (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Classical_Track_Title_Partnumber_Style). > > > Good call. I'm a fan of proper quotation marks, but I > don't feel that > strongly about it. I realize that I also failed to > mention apostrophes; > I think true apostrophes should be preferred. > > > I agree, but I am concerned about the ease of entering those > quotes. If I'm not mistaken, most browsers will enter plain > quotes in input fields. Can Guess Case convert them reliably, > or do we need another way to support entering the right > apostrophes? > > > Regards, > Jeroen > > > This has come up when we were talking about elipses, hyphens, and > quotes a couple of years ago when dealing with Clean up CSG. I'd > suggest that the same principle talked about then should be allowed > here too. Prefer the correct characters, but don't bar the use of > basic ASCII characters. > > > Brian +1. ASCII should be acceptable, but not preferred. UNICODE trumps ASCII. ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
Alex Mauer wrote: > > On 11/15/2010 9:05 AM, Jeroen Latour wrote: >> I agree, but I am concerned about the ease of entering those quotes. If >> I'm not mistaken, most browsers will enter plain quotes in input fields. >> Can Guess Case convert them reliably, or do we need another way to >> support entering the right apostrophes? > > Wikipedia gives several methods for entering apostrophes on various > OSes[1]. I know it misses out on at least two for Linux, those being > [Compose], [>], ['] and [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[u], 8-2-1-7. > > A similar guide exists for quotation marks[2] and ellipses[3]. The > difficulty of entering them as well as the fact that some of the easier > methods are not common knowledge and not necessarily enabled by default > are part of the reason I think we should be fairly lax in our preference > for proper typographical quotes. It will do no good to require them if > it drives away people who can't be bothered. But it would probably be > good to have edits which change from the less-preferred method to the > more-preferred method to be autoedits, much like edits that only change > capitalization now. > > --Alex Mauer "hawke" > > 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Computing > 2. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Typing_quotation_marks_on_a_computer_keyboard > 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis#Computer_representations > > > ___ > MusicBrainz-style mailing list > MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org > http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style > > Like I mentioned earlier, a guide on the edit pages may be helpful. I envision it as a heading: "[+] Punctuation Guide", which when clicked, or tabbed to, expands and displays a table of various Unicode characters and which ASCII characters they should preferably replace. The editor could easily copy/paste the appropriate symbols. -- View this message in context: http://musicbrainz-mailing-lists.2986109.n2.nabble.com/Ellipses-quotation-marks-and-the-miscellaneous-guideline-tp5734079p5742242.html Sent from the Style discussions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
Nikki-3 wrote: > > jacobbrett wrote: >> +1 to the above, also. >> If we remove the miscellaneous guidelines, perhaps a switch could be >> added >> into the next version of Picard Tagger to automatically convert Unicode >> characters into the ASCII substitutes? > > It could be done with a plugin now. http://pastebin.ca/1989878 seems to > work for me, although I have no idea how fast it is. > > Nikki > > ___ > MusicBrainz-style mailing list > MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org > http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style > > Thanks, is there a release I can test this with? It doesn't seem to work when I manually insert characters into the "New Metadata" title. Based on that, I'm guessing it modifies incoming release data, so the user never sees the misc. Unicode characters, thus the file name is saved using ASCII characters also. On that note, is there a similar plugin/script that converts Unicode characters to ASCII equivalents, though only for the file name? -- View this message in context: http://musicbrainz-mailing-lists.2986109.n2.nabble.com/Ellipses-quotation-marks-and-the-miscellaneous-guideline-tp5734079p5742296.html Sent from the Style discussions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On 13/11/10 20:41, Alex Mauer wrote: > On 11/13/2010 2:30 AM, Jeroen Latour wrote: >> Yes, although that would require a translation table I think. Also, for >> most Unicode characters there isn't a good replacement... maybe you >> could write Chinese characters and characters from other non-latin >> scripts phonetically. >> Is there a big need for this? > > libiconv can do it to some extent[1,2], though I'm not sure about a full > transliteration such as Kanji to latin. It certainly appears to handle > ellipses. Also not sure about portability for that. Transliteration is obviously language specific, for Japanese to latin there are a number of systems and I do not think any of these can be automated properly. Still, machine transliteration is probably useful to some users, so it would be nice if we could make it easy for other contributors to write plugins for Picard for this task. > As nikki pointed out we have pseudo-releases and the "is a > transliterated version of" AR. These should definitely be used in Picard. -- kuno. ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
jacobbrett wrote: > > Nikki-3 wrote: >> It could be done with a plugin now. http://pastebin.ca/1989878 seems to >> work for me, although I have no idea how fast it is. >> > Thanks, is there a release I can test this with? Try http://musicbrainz.org/release/0cb2e7d6-0ddd-41df-b8dd-36b7b076fc2a.html Although it seems I left out « and »... it should be easy enough for people to modify if they want to add other characters though, it was mostly an example. > It doesn't seem to work when I manually insert characters into the "New > Metadata" title. Based on that, I'm guessing it modifies incoming release > data, so the user never sees the misc. Unicode characters, thus the file > name is saved using ASCII characters also. Something like that, yeah. > On that note, is there a similar plugin/script that converts Unicode > characters to ASCII equivalents, though only for the file name? If it's possible to do that, I'd love to know how! It would be really useful to be able to tag non-latin stuff with the original titles but use a transliteration for the file names. Nikki ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Nikki wrote: > jacobbrett wrote: >> On that note, is there a similar plugin/script that converts Unicode >> characters to ASCII equivalents, though only for the file name? > > If it's possible to do that, I'd love to know how! It would be really > useful to be able to tag non-latin stuff with the original titles but > use a transliteration for the file names. You could make the plugin define a TaggerScript function (see e.g. [1]) that does the conversion and then use it for file formatting (e.g. "$asciize(%artist% - %track%)"). Lukas [1] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~musicbrainz-developers/picard/trunk/annotate/head:/contrib/plugins/swapprefix.py ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
Lukáš Lalinský wrote: > You could make the plugin define a TaggerScript function (see e.g. > [1]) that does the conversion and then use it for file formatting > (e.g. "$asciize(%artist% - %track%)"). Oh, cool! Thanks! So something like http://pastebin.ca/1993155 then, which creates $asciipunct() ... although most of those replacements will just get turned into _ in Windows. Nikki ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 09:30, Jeroen Latour wrote: > When we change the Guess Case script to remove this, perhaps we can > go one step further and replace ... (three full stops) with … (ellipsis). > Would that cause problems with many song titles, though? Just because I noticed nobody saying anything about this: as long as *only* three-dots-long strings are replaced, I don’t think there’s any problem. The script *must* however avoid anything with more (or less) than three dots. This sometimes happens (I’ve been in a dot-counting edit-note discussion about a song or album name which did this), and sequences of ellipses and normal dots are *not* pretty. Just for the record, allowing correct* typographical marks on MB has my enthusiastic +1. (*: read “pretty”) I can’t wait for the discussion about whether « ‘cause » or « ’cause » is the correct abbreviation for “because” :D -- Bogdan Butnaru ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On 11/23/2010 3:43 AM, Bogdan Butnaru wrote: > The script *must* however avoid anything with more (or less) > than three dots. 100% agreed. It’ probably fine for any sequence of periods which is divisible by three. …… looks alright, but ….. does not. So it’s clearly not as simple as s/.../…/g, to use a regexp. > I can’t wait for the discussion about whether « ‘cause » or « ’cause » > is the correct abbreviation for “because” :D Heh. Why would there be any discussion any more than there is over whether “it’s” or “it‘s” is correct? Only one of those is an apostrophe. You’re probably right though, especially since I’m sure at least one album out there uses «‘cause». ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 14:39, Alex Mauer wrote: > On 11/23/2010 3:43 AM, Bogdan Butnaru wrote: >> The script *must* however avoid anything with more (or less) >> than three dots. > > 100% agreed. It’ probably fine for any sequence of periods which is > divisible by three. …… looks alright, but ….. does not. So it’s clearly > not as simple as s/.../…/g, to use a regexp. I agree with your agreement, but I must disagree with the “divisible by three” rule. First of all, it only looks OK with *some* fonts. It can look very much uglier with others, though. I’ve seen many where the distance between two ellipses is different between the distance between the dots *within* an ellipsis. Not to mention that the distance between characters can be changed by the software using the font. (Further argument: on my system+browser+email setup, the five dots example in your message looks very good, just as the six-dots one. On yours it probably doesn’t.) Second, there’s the semantic argument: There’s a pretty clear idea that there’s a typographical mark called “ellipsis”, that it looks like three successive full-stops, and that it has some particular meaning (ie, elided words, or pregnant pause, or a few different things in math contexts). There is much less consensus about what (or if) four or more dots mean, and I’ve seen style guides and the like disagree about it, and I’m pretty sure artists don’t even look at style guides. So, in the interest of avoiding future style arguments (I was going to say “preemptively”, but I guess we’re already arguing the subject), I propose the very simple and clear rule “for exactly three dots you may use an ellipsis, any other number of dots is that exact number of full-stop characters”. :⋅) -- Bogdan Butnaru ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 14:39, Alex Mauer wrote: > On 11/23/2010 3:43 AM, Bogdan Butnaru wrote: >> I can’t wait for the discussion about whether « ‘cause » or « ’cause » >> is the correct abbreviation for “because” :D > > Heh. Why would there be any discussion any more than there is over > whether “it’s” or “it‘s” is correct? Only one of those is an apostrophe. > > You’re probably right though, especially since I’m sure at least one > album out there uses «‘cause». I’m pretty sure that’s a combination of “smart quote” features in programs that are in the uncanny valley of smartness and users that don’t quite care about typography to distinguish between the various quote-like characters. (In case that last remark seemed too judgmental, let it be on the record that I also think having dozens of barely distinguishable quote-like characters is kind of ridiculous. It’s really inconvenient to find a place on a custom keyboard layout even for the ten I use regularly—and I’m not counting the comma or the accents—let alone all of them. But they are so prtty...) — Bogdan Butnaru ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
On 11/23/2010 08:15 AM, Bogdan Butnaru wrote: > On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 14:39, Alex Mauer wrote: >> On 11/23/2010 3:43 AM, Bogdan Butnaru wrote: >>> The script *must* however avoid anything with more (or less) >>> than three dots. >> >> 100% agreed. It’ probably fine for any sequence of periods which is >> divisible by three. …… looks alright, but ….. does not. So it’s clearly >> not as simple as s/.../…/g, to use a regexp. > > I agree with your agreement, but I must disagree with the “divisible > by three” rule. > > First of all, it only looks OK with *some* fonts. It can look very > much uglier with others, though. (Further > argument: on my system+browser+email setup, the five dots example in > your message looks very good, just as the six-dots one. On yours it > probably doesn’t.) It’s funny, I just changed systems before I read your message, and the double-ellipsis where I’m quoted doesn’t look good any more! So you’re totally correct. Ellipsis for three-dots only, some number of periods for anything else. —Alex Mauer “hawke” ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
Alex Mauer wrote: > > On 11/23/2010 08:15 AM, Bogdan Butnaru wrote: >> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 14:39, Alex Mauer wrote: >>> On 11/23/2010 3:43 AM, Bogdan Butnaru wrote: The script *must* however avoid anything with more (or less) than three dots. >>> >>> 100% agreed. It’ probably fine for any sequence of periods which is >>> divisible by three. …… looks alright, but ….. does not. So it’s clearly >>> not as simple as s/.../…/g, to use a regexp. >> >> I agree with your agreement, but I must disagree with the “divisible >> by three” rule. >> >> First of all, it only looks OK with *some* fonts. It can look very >> much uglier with others, though. (Further >> argument: on my system+browser+email setup, the five dots example in >> your message looks very good, just as the six-dots one. On yours it >> probably doesn’t.) > > It’s funny, I just changed systems before I read your message, and the > double-ellipsis where I’m quoted doesn’t look good any more! So you’re > totally correct. Ellipsis for three-dots only, some number of periods > for anything else. > > —Alex Mauer “hawke” > > > ___ > MusicBrainz-style mailing list > MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org > http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style > +1 -- View this message in context: http://musicbrainz-mailing-lists.2986109.n2.nabble.com/Ellipses-quotation-marks-and-the-miscellaneous-guideline-tp5734079p5769396.html Sent from the Style discussions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
Re: [mb-style] Ellipses, quotation marks, and the miscellaneous guideline
>> I can’t wait for the discussion about whether « ‘cause » or « ’cause » >> is the correct abbreviation for “because” :D > > Heh. Why would there be any discussion any more than there is over > whether “it’s” or “it‘s” is correct? Only one of those is an apostrophe. If there will be such an issue, I expect it more often to be about "'n'" like in "rock 'n' roll", which in my experience quite often is written as "rock ‘n’ roll". At least it didn't make me much time to find a few examples of releases that writes like that on the cover: http://musicbrainz.org/release/ab6c8085-16ac-4849-8fc3-94f35f98bccd.html http://musicbrainz.org/release/81182837-83ef-4e0a-b84a-3aa0515d833c.html http://musicbrainz.org/release/03625ca3-6cff-4c26-aca9-8791308cc104.html (My opinion would be to silently correct that to "’n’" here except in very special cases, just as we "correct" capitalization.) ___ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
