[Way OT] dieresis

Op Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:29:33 +0100 schreef D Yuniskis
not.going.to.be_at_seen.com>:
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.

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

I actually use them when making notes to myself. Makes it easier to
decipher.

[...]
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.

Not being a monotheist, I find it offensive to think that some god would
somehow deserve a capital letter while others do not. I do recognize

that not all gods were created equal, but that doesn't mean that anyone
has the right to define in language that some god (or some group of
allegedly exclusive gods) comes before others.

I think that's why USEnglish is so wonky. Too much "stolen"
from other languages and then bastardized over the years.
(though I heard a recent commentary alleging USEnglish
is truer to "old" UKEnglish than current UKEnglish is, today).

Couple that with regional differences (unavoidable with a
land mass of this size) and its a wonder *anyone* can
understand it!

El 05/03/2010 12:36, Boudewijn Dijkstra escribió:

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!

What an American calls an American is also very ambiguous to me.

Indeed, most Americans speak Spanish, not English

On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:14:05 -0800, JosephKK wrote:

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.

It isn't really a distro. it started out as bits of RedHat 6, with
additions, back in 2000. Since then it's had many changes of libraries,
and about 12 kernel changes and rebuilds total.

Started with a 2.2 kernel, now 2.4.19, which supports everything I need.

Unrecognizable as a distro. There's bits of Debian and Slackware in
there,too.

Most of it was compiled from source on the target machine.

Now on its third set of hardware, and maybe fifth HDD. Aren't dd and GNU
parted wonderful? Originally it was spread across two smallish HDDs.

Once I get something working the way I want it, I see no reason to change.
No major changes for a couple of years.

Only reason I'd ever change X version would be if I wanted support for
dual head, which for me means never.

Boudewijn Dijkstra wrote:
Op Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:29:33 +0100 schreef D Yuniskis
not.going.to.be_at_seen.com>:
David Brown wrote:
D Yuniskis wrote:
David Brown wrote:
rant
[...]
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.
Not being a monotheist, I find it offensive to think that some god
would somehow deserve a capital letter while others do not. I do
recognize

There is no claim that it is any *particular* god. Most
dictionaries qualify the "G" definition to be "In monotheistic
religions..." so they cover their bases.

that not all gods were created equal, but that doesn't mean that anyone
has the right to define in language that some god (or some group of
allegedly exclusive gods) comes before others.

"D Yuniskis" <not.going.to.be_at_seen.com> wrote in message
news:hn3dc2$kvl$1_at_speranza.aioe.org...
I think that's why USEnglish is so wonky. Too much "stolen"
from other languages and then bastardized over the years.
(though I heard a recent commentary alleging USEnglish
is truer to "old" UKEnglish than current UKEnglish is, today).

Couple that with regional differences (unavoidable with a
land mass of this size) and its a wonder *anyone* can
understand it!

Well, those in the deep South can be pretty thickly accented.

Then again, those in the UK can be pretty thickly accented, too. How is it
even possible that so many dialects are spoken on an island the size of
Michigan (where, as far as I know, only two dialects are spoken, the odd one

out being the Yoopers, eh)? We aren't even English and we speak the
language better than the bloody English!

Op Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:02:08 +0100 schreef D Yuniskis
not.going.to.be_at_seen.com>:
Boudewijn Dijkstra wrote:
Op Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:29:33 +0100 schreef D Yuniskis
not.going.to.be_at_seen.com>:
David Brown wrote:
D Yuniskis wrote:
David Brown wrote:
rant
[...]
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.
Not being a monotheist, I find it offensive to think that some god
would somehow deserve a capital letter while others do not. I do
recognize

There is no claim that it is any *particular* god. Most
dictionaries qualify the "G" definition to be "In monotheistic
religions..." so they cover their bases.

The point was that somehow monotheistic religions seem to deserve the
great G, while the others are left with a mere g.

that not all gods were created equal, but that doesn't mean that
anyone has the right to define in language that some god (or some
group of allegedly exclusive gods) comes before others.

I no longer suffer from these problems. :

Though I am still puzzled by "Aluminium" (I originally thought
this to be a friend's mispronunciation of "Aluminum" -- but it is
apparently how the Brits say and spell it!)

On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:44:32 -0800, Fred Abse
excretatauris_at_invalid.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:14:05 -0800, JosephKK wrote:

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.

The Suse 11.1 kernel is 2.6.27.45...

It isn't really a distro. it started out as bits of RedHat 6, with
additions, back in 2000. Since then it's had many changes of libraries,
and about 12 kernel changes and rebuilds total.

Started with a 2.2 kernel, now 2.4.19, which supports everything I need.

Unrecognizable as a distro. There's bits of Debian and Slackware in
there,too.

Most of it was compiled from source on the target machine.

So it is the Fred Abse version (not distributed).

Now on its third set of hardware, and maybe fifth HDD. Aren't dd and GNU
parted wonderful? Originally it was spread across two smallish HDDs.

Once I get something working the way I want it, I see no reason to
change. No major changes for a couple of years.

Only reason I'd ever change X version would be if I wanted support for
dual head, which for me means never.

Oh. Which X are you running?

I tried dual head for a while but quit when widescreens started getting
reasonable in price. Currently using a 24" 1920x1200_at_60Hz.

On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:37:06 -0800, JosephKK wrote:

On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:44:32 -0800, Fred Abse
excretatauris_at_invalid.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:14:05 -0800, JosephKK wrote:

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.

The Suse 11.1 kernel is 2.6.27.45...


2.6 kernels are a much different animal to 2.4 Not that practical to
"upgrade" from the one to the other.

I will not argue with you here. I have found that it is a case of build

It isn't really a distro. it started out as bits of RedHat 6, with
additions, back in 2000. Since then it's had many changes of libraries,
and about 12 kernel changes and rebuilds total.

Started with a 2.2 kernel, now 2.4.19, which supports everything I need.

Unrecognizable as a distro. There's bits of Debian and Slackware in
there,too.

Most of it was compiled from source on the target machine.

So it is the Fred Abse version (not distributed).


If you like.
The whole beauty of Linux for me is that you can get it to do things the
way you want, rather than the way someone else thinks you should.

One reason I did it this way was to get some deeper insight into how
things actually work


Now on its third set of hardware, and maybe fifth HDD. Aren't dd and GNU
parted wonderful? Originally it was spread across two smallish HDDs.

Once I get something working the way I want it, I see no reason to
change. No major changes for a couple of years.

Only reason I'd ever change X version would be if I wanted support for
dual head, which for me means never.

Oh. Which X are you running?

X11R6 from about 1999


I tried dual head for a while but quit when widescreens started getting
reasonable in price. Currently using a 24" 1920x1200_at_60Hz.

Just 19" CRT here. I don't like LCD much.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:58:07 -0700, D Yuniskis wrote:

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)

Pardon me, New Yorker always adds dieresis (pre:existing, co:operate,
etc). I assume it's the New Yorker style guide, because the authors who
also publish elsewhere do not show this in their other work (e.g.
Malcolm Gladwell).

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)

I use parted as needed. Not so skillful with dd yet. "cp -R *" and the
like serve me pretty well.

On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:48:34 -0800, JosephKK wrote:

I use parted as needed. Not so skillful with dd yet. "cp -R *" and the
like serve me pretty well.

cp -R * won't transfer the boot sector, partition table, etc.

Just use "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc" with the target drive on the second
IDE. Then go to bed. It'll be finished in the morning

Don't do it with mounted drives. Boot with a startup floppy or CD with a
copy of dd and parted on it. Don't worry about BIOS settings. Linux
doesn't use them for I/O. I've actually run a 40 gig HDD on a machine with
an 8 gig BIOS limit, (with a 1024 cylinder boot partition to fool it).

You'll find all your original partitions recreated on your new drive, with
empty space left if it's bigger. It'll boot, too.

Then use parted to stretch the created partition to the size of the new
(bigger) HDD. Go for breakfast whilst that's running.

Thanks for the offer of the monitors. I have quite a few spare already.