[Way OT] dieresis

Hi David,

David Brown wrote:
rant

For people using Windows with English-language keyboard layouts, it is
extremely inconvenient to make proper use of diacritical marks of any
kind - thus people generally don't bother. I have no idea why there
is such a limitation here - after all, with non-English keyboard
layouts in Windows you have easy access to the more common marks even
when they are not part of your language (on my Norwegian keyboard, I
can easily write

That goes to the point I was making -- that these "old"
adornments are just no longer used.

E.g., when *writing* (as with pen and paper) "naive", you can
*easily* put two dots over the 'i' -- yet how often do you see
it done? In the DSw, *some* folks will still observe the
use of "~n" where needed -- no doubt a consequence of the
Hispanic influence there.

(US) English seems to be shedding these decorations except
for artsy-fartsy corporate use in which the vendor tries to
look "less commonplace" by misspelling their name and adding
silly accents/diacryticals/pronunciation marks to "look cool".

naïve). And of course on Linux, you typically have far more
combinations directly available, and support for a "compose" key if
you need it.

Ditto Solaris as "compose" has a key dedicated.

The upshot of this your average English-only Windows-only computer
user has little idea about how to get non-Ascii characters into a
document, and generally does not bother.

I contend that they aren't aware of the "need". How many know how
(when) to use a semicolon?

Word processors (in particular, a certain well-known word processor
from a certain well-known software company) have greatly reduced the
quality of typesetting in general. Few people seem to understand
fundamentals such as consistent use of spacing and fonts, and for some
unfathomable reason, word processors don't automate these rules (TeX
and LaTeX have done it for a couple of decades - it's not /that/ hard
to implement). Try asking your company's technical writers if they
understand the difference between a hyphen, an en-dash, and an em-dash!

I have been quite happy, in general, with FrameMaker (and would
highly recommend it to folks who do any significant amount of
DTP -- I even use it for correspondence). But, it requires
magic incantations for most of the "special characters". E.g.,
ESC <space> m em space
ESC <space> n en space
ESC <space> 1 '0' space
ESC <space> h non-break space
Ctrl-Q Shft-q em dash
Ctrl-Q Shft-p en dash
ESC - h non-break hyphen

Some would argue these to be a bit more intuitive than trying
to commit to memory their Unicode equivalents. <shrug> Note
that the "no break" variants are "application specific" so I
can cut them some slack, there.

It, however, falls down in several areas that, to me, seem to
be no-brainers. E.g., it should allow me to automatically apply
a particular character format to certain "character combinations"
(e.g., "a priori", "etc.", "e.g.", "i.e.") instead of forcing me
to do this with "Find and Replace".

It also has some little bugs that creep up when you try to play
tricks to coerce certain layouts "automatically".

Ventura Publisher was much easier to trick into doing what you
wanted -- though you had to think as a programmer would and
modify settings in predictable ways to force the layout engine to
put things where you want them.

I had one layout for a "pictorial" table of contents in which
pictures of screen shots were annotated with short commentaries.
The commentaries appeared to the left of the screen image on recto
pages and to the *right* on verso. *Then* this "assembly" would
cling to the *binding* edge of the page leaving a wide margin on
the outer edge. I.e., as a particular "annotated image" moved
from one page to another, it would automatically re-lay-itself-out
to satisfy these criteria. It was visually appealing -- moreso
because most readers never noticed the differences between
recto and verso renderings!

I haven't found anything that could be coaxed into doing this
other than VP. (Corel screwed up VP when they bought it -- "Gee,
it works great! Let's FIX it.")

Well, we *were* talking about rants, right? :

D Yuniskis wrote:
Hi David,

David Brown wrote:
rant

For people using Windows with English-language keyboard layouts, it
is extremely inconvenient to make proper use of diacritical marks of
any kind - thus people generally don't bother. I have no idea why
there is such a limitation here - after all, with non-English
keyboard layouts in Windows you have easy access to the more common
marks even when they are not part of your language (on my Norwegian
keyboard, I can easily write

That goes to the point I was making -- that these "old"
adornments are just no longer used.

First off, these "old" adornments, as you call them, are part of the
language for many non-English languages, and are very much used -
failing to use the correct marks is a spelling mistake. It is only
within the English-only world that people think it is acceptable to omit
them.

I also want to point out that while /most/ people don't use the
appropriate adornments, some people still do - such as myself.

E.g., when *writing* (as with pen and paper) "naive", you can
*easily* put two dots over the 'i' -- yet how often do you see
it done? In the DSw, *some* folks will still observe the
use of "~n" where needed -- no doubt a consequence of the
Hispanic influence there.

To be entirely honest, there are not many occasions when you need to use
adorned letters in English. How many other examples are there than
naïve, and how often does that word turn up in writing?

Actually, since you mention Spanish, "señor" would be another example.
Thunderbird's English language dictionary offers to correct "senor" to
"señor" - there's another way to type the letter using an English-only
keyboard!

And where is "DSw" ? I hope you are not making the assumption that all
Americans know what it stands for, and therefore everyone else should...

(US) English seems to be shedding these decorations except
for artsy-fartsy corporate use in which the vendor tries to
look "less commonplace" by misspelling their name and adding
silly accents/diacryticals/pronunciation marks to "look cool".

naïve). And of course on Linux, you typically have far more
combinations directly available, and support for a "compose" key if
you need it.

Ditto Solaris as "compose" has a key dedicated.

Yes, I should have generalised to *nix rather than just Linux.

The upshot of this your average English-only Windows-only computer
user has little idea about how to get non-Ascii characters into a
document, and generally does not bother.

I contend that they aren't aware of the "need". How many know how
(when) to use a semicolon?

Education ain't what it used to be...

Of course, there is the other point that languages change over time.
While many people would agree that "naïve" should be spelt "naïve", very
few people would write coöperate - it has gone out of fashion long ago.

Word processors (in particular, a certain well-known word processor
from a certain well-known software company) have greatly reduced the
quality of typesetting in general. Few people seem to understand
fundamentals such as consistent use of spacing and fonts, and for
some unfathomable reason, word processors don't automate these rules
(TeX and LaTeX have done it for a couple of decades - it's not /that/
hard to implement). Try asking your company's technical writers if
they understand the difference between a hyphen, an en-dash, and an
em-dash!

I have been quite happy, in general, with FrameMaker (and would
highly recommend it to folks who do any significant amount of
DTP -- I even use it for correspondence). But, it requires
magic incantations for most of the "special characters". E.g.,
ESC <space> m em space
ESC <space> n en space
ESC <space> 1 '0' space
ESC <space> h non-break space
Ctrl-Q Shft-q em dash
Ctrl-Q Shft-p en dash
ESC - h non-break hyphen

Some would argue these to be a bit more intuitive than trying
to commit to memory their Unicode equivalents. <shrug> Note
that the "no break" variants are "application specific" so I
can cut them some slack, there.

It, however, falls down in several areas that, to me, seem to
be no-brainers. E.g., it should allow me to automatically apply
a particular character format to certain "character combinations"
(e.g., "a priori", "etc.", "e.g.", "i.e.") instead of forcing me
to do this with "Find and Replace".

I am not sure I would agree with putting "e.g.", "etc.", or "i.e." in
Italics - I think they are too much part of the modern English language
to be considered non-English phrases. /a priori/ is different in that
it is a complete phrase rather than an abbreviation. I hope you always
remember the comma after "e.g." and similar abbreviations.

If you are interested in good typography, you really should drop these
WYSIAYG systems and learn LaTeX. If nothing else, you'll learn more
from about computer typesetting from reading the Knuth's "The TeXbook"
and Lamport's "LaTeX: A Document Preparation System" than from almost
any other source I know of.

On 01/03/2010 22:58, D Yuniskis wrote:
Hi,

I do a lot of formal writing (specifications, manuals, etc.).

And, I suspect much of my spelling, vocabulary, grammar,
etc. traits have remained largely unchanged since grade
school. :

Today, as I was trying to remember a keystroke sequence
for an accented character in FrameMaker, I *conciously*
noticed that I still automatically spell "naive" with a
dieresis.

At first, I shrugged this off as a throwback to something
I learned in childhood.

But, then I started thinking about it more. In particular,
the fact that I *only* use it in this word! And, have
*never* used it in other places where it "should" be used.

(of course, no one *still* uses it at all, so this is a moot
point)


rant

For people using Windows with English-language keyboard layouts, it is
extremely inconvenient to make proper use of diacritical marks of any
kind - thus people generally don't bother. I have no idea why there is
such a limitation here - after all, with non-English keyboard layouts in
Windows you have easy access to the more common marks even when they are
not part of your language (on my Norwegian keyboard, I can easily write
naïve). And of course on Linux, you typically have far more
combinations directly available, and support for a "compose" key if you
need it.

The upshot of this your average English-only Windows-only computer user
has little idea about how to get non-Ascii characters into a document,
and generally does not bother.

Word processors (in particular, a certain well-known word processor from
a certain well-known software company) have greatly reduced the quality
of typesetting in general. Few people seem to understand fundamentals
such as consistent use of spacing and fonts, and for some unfathomable
reason, word processors don't automate these rules (TeX and LaTeX have
done it for a couple of decades - it's not /that/ hard to implement).
Try asking your company's technical writers if they understand the
difference between a hyphen, an en-dash, and an em-dash!

/rant

Hi David,

David Brown wrote:
rant

For people using Windows with English-language keyboard layouts, it is
extremely inconvenient to make proper use of diacritical marks of any
kind - thus people generally don't bother. I have no idea why there is
such a limitation here - after all, with non-English keyboard layouts in
Windows you have easy access to the more common marks even when they are
not part of your language (on my Norwegian keyboard, I can easily write

That goes to the point I was making -- that these "old"
adornments are just no longer used.

E.g., when *writing* (as with pen and paper) "naive", you can
*easily* put two dots over the 'i' -- yet how often do you see
it done? In the DSw, *some* folks will still observe the
use of "~n" where needed -- no doubt a consequence of the
Hispanic influence there.

(US) English seems to be shedding these decorations except
for artsy-fartsy corporate use in which the vendor tries to
look "less commonplace" by misspelling their name and adding
silly accents/diacryticals/pronunciation marks to "look cool".

naïve). And of course on Linux, you typically have far more
combinations directly available, and support for a "compose" key if you
need it.

Ditto Solaris as "compose" has a key dedicated.

The upshot of this your average English-only Windows-only computer user
has little idea about how to get non-Ascii characters into a document,
and generally does not bother.

I contend that they aren't aware of the "need". How many know how
(when) to use a semicolon?

Word processors (in particular, a certain well-known word processor from
a certain well-known software company) have greatly reduced the quality
of typesetting in general. Few people seem to understand fundamentals
such as consistent use of spacing and fonts, and for some unfathomable
reason, word processors don't automate these rules (TeX and LaTeX have
done it for a couple of decades - it's not /that/ hard to implement).
Try asking your company's technical writers if they understand the
difference between a hyphen, an en-dash, and an em-dash!

I have been quite happy, in general, with FrameMaker (and would
highly recommend it to folks who do any significant amount of
DTP -- I even use it for correspondence). But, it requires
magic incantations for most of the "special characters". E.g.,
ESC <space> m em space
ESC <space> n en space
ESC <space> 1 '0' space
ESC <space> h non-break space
Ctrl-Q Shft-q em dash
Ctrl-Q Shft-p en dash
ESC - h non-break hyphen

Some would argue these to be a bit more intuitive than trying
to commit to memory their Unicode equivalents. <shrug> Note
that the "no break" variants are "application specific" so I
can cut them some slack, there.

It, however, falls down in several areas that, to me, seem to
be no-brainers. E.g., it should allow me to automatically apply
a particular character format to certain "character combinations"
(e.g., "a priori", "etc.", "e.g.", "i.e.") instead of forcing me
to do this with "Find and Replace".

It also has some little bugs that creep up when you try to play
tricks to coerce certain layouts "automatically".

Ventura Publisher was much easier to trick into doing what you
wanted -- though you had to think as a programmer would and
modify settings in predictable ways to force the layout engine to
put things where you want them.

I had one layout for a "pictorial" table of contents in which
pictures of screen shots were annotated with short commentaries.
The commentaries appeared to the left of the screen image on recto
pages and to the *right* on verso. *Then* this "assembly" would
cling to the *binding* edge of the page leaving a wide margin on
the outer edge. I.e., as a particular "annotated image" moved
from one page to another, it would automatically re-lay-itself-out
to satisfy these criteria. It was visually appealing -- moreso
because most readers never noticed the differences between
recto and verso renderings!

I haven't found anything that could be coaxed into doing this
other than VP. (Corel screwed up VP when they bought it -- "Gee,
it works great! Let's FIX it.")

Well, we *were* talking about rants, right? :

David Brown wrote:
D Yuniskis wrote:
David Brown wrote:
rant

For people using Windows with English-language keyboard layouts, it
is extremely inconvenient to make proper use of diacritical marks of
any kind - thus people generally don't bother. I have no idea why
there is such a limitation here - after all, with non-English
keyboard layouts in Windows you have easy access to the more common
marks even when they are not part of your language (on my Norwegian
keyboard, I can easily write

That goes to the point I was making -- that these "old"
adornments are just no longer used.
First off, these "old" adornments, as you call them, are part of the
language for many non-English languages, and are very much used -
failing to use the correct marks is a spelling mistake. It is only
within the English-only world that people think it is acceptable to
omit them.

That was my point. Many "foreign" (being US-centric in my comments,
here) languages use *lots* of diacritical marks.

I particularly
love the upside down interrogatives used at the start of questions!

[...]
Of course, there is the other point that languages change over time.
While many people would agree that "naïve" should be spelt "naïve",
very few people would write coöperate - it has gone out of fashion long
ago.

Sure. Soon, OMG will have a formal dictionary entry, people will
spell "God" (proper) with a lowercase G, etc.

And of course on Linux, you typically have far more
combinations directly available, and support for a "compose" key if you
need it.

BTW, from the "sound", one might think that "dieresis" is a term for
a medical procedure...

On Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:32:50 -0800, Robert Baer wrote:

BTW, from the "sound", one might think that "dieresis" is a term for
a medical procedure...

Nah! It's medication that makes you pee

On Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:52:05 +0100, David Brown wrote:

And of course on Linux, you typically have far more
combinations directly available, and support for a "compose" key if you
need it.

A use for the, otherwise redundant, "Windows" keys.

I have "left windows" as a compose key.

Þïß îß whät ìt dõèß

On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:10:20 -0800, Fred Abse<excretatauris_at_invalid.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:52:05 +0100, David Brown wrote:

And of course on Linux, you typically have far more
combinations directly available, and support for a "compose" key if you
need it.

A use for the, otherwise redundant, "Windows" keys.

I have "left windows" as a compose key.

Þïß îß whät ìt dõèß ;-)

Groovy. How did you remap that key so usefully?

On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:10:20 -0800, Fred Abse
excretatauris_at_invalid.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:52:05 +0100, David Brown wrote:

And of course on Linux, you typically have far more combinations
directly available, and support for a "compose" key if you need it.

A use for the, otherwise redundant, "Windows" keys.

I have "left windows" as a compose key.

Þïß îß whät ìt dõèß ;-)

Groovy. How did you remap that key so usefully?

On Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:37:31 -0800, JosephKK wrote:

On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:10:20 -0800, Fred Abse
excretatauris_at_invalid.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:52:05 +0100, David Brown wrote:

And of course on Linux, you typically have far more combinations
directly available, and support for a "compose" key if you need it.

A use for the, otherwise redundant, "Windows" keys.

I have "left windows" as a compose key.

Þïß îß whät ìt dõèß ;-)

Groovy. How did you remap that key so usefully?

You need a hidden file called .Xmodmap in your home directory.

Here's mine:

! clear caps lock
remove lock = Caps_Lock
add Shift = Caps_Lock
!remap windows key
keycode 115 = Multi_key



"Multi_key" is synonymous with "Compose key"


You might want to keep the caps lock, if so, comment out lines 2 & 3 with
a "!"

Run dumpkeys in an xterm to see the compose key sequences.
A few may not work.


I've also gotten a program that you run from .Xclients-default that will put
numlock on when you start X.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/numlockx

hat Distro/edition do you use?
I am transitioning from opensuse 10.3 to opensuse 11.1. There is a lot of
X changes under the hood.

What an American calls a foreign language is to me very ambiguous,
considering the use of Spanish now and in the past, the use of German
before WW1 and also the real indigenous languages!

I contend that they aren't aware of the "need". How many know how
(when) to use a semicolon?

My job requires that i know. I even have my own copy of CMoS.