On 01/11/2018 at 00:41, Martin J. Dürst wrote: > > On 2018/11/01 03:10, Marcel Schneider via Unicode wrote: > > On 31/10/2018 at 17:27, Julian Bradfield via Unicode wrote: > > >> When one does question the Académie about the fact, this is their > >> reply: > >> > >> Le fait de placer en exposant ces mentions est de convention > >> typographique ; il convient donc de le faire. Les seules exceptions > >> sont pour Mme et Mlle. > > Translation: > > “Superscripting these mentions is typographical convention; > > consequently it is convenient to do so. The only exceptions are > > for "Mme" [short for "Madame", Mrs] and "Mlle" [short for "Mademoiselle", > > Ms].” > >> > >> which, if my understanding of "convient" is correct, carefully does > >> quite say that it is *wrong* not to superscript, but that one should > >> superscript when one can because that is the convention in typography. > > As for translation of "il convient", I think Julian is closer to the > intended meaning. The verb "convenir" has several meanings (see e.g. > https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/convenir), > but especially in this impersonal usage, the meaning "it is advisable, > it is right to, it is proper to" seems to be most appropriate in this > context. > > It may not at all be convenient (=practical) to use the superscripts, > e.g. if they are not easily available on a keyboard.
Very good, thank you. I forgot about the meaning of “convenient”, and didn’t think at “advisable” nor at “right to, proper to”. The point about keyboarding is essential. As long as superscripts are considered exotic or at least very special and need to be grabbed off a character picker, there is no point in bothering users with inputting them. But since that is going to change, it would be fine that Unicode be ready to back the corresponding keyboard layouts so that they won’t get challenged by the sort of considerations prevailing among hardliners. Partly, i.e. for fr(-FR) ordinal indicators, Unicode is ready. Best regards, Marcel > > (French isn't my native language, and nor is English) (Neither is mine either, but I’m based in France since a long time.)
