[Way OT] dieresis

=20

et.

Also Y is often classed as a special case vowel in English for words such= =20 as -

by gym rhythm

--=20 Paul Carpenter | snipped-for-privacy@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk PC Services Timing Diagram Font GNU H8 - compiler & Renesas H8/H8S/H8 Tiny For those web sites you hate

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Paul Carpenter
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El 02/03/2010 21:52, Stefan Reuther escribió:

In Spanish we use ü, and call it "u with dieresis"

I don't know if it should be considered a diaeresis or an umlaut by (your) definition, though. Judge by yourself:

Agüero sounds like ah-GWEH-roh Aguero would sound like ah-GEH-roh

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Reply to
Ignacio G. T.

Crossword clue:

"Act together to pay for making barrel (9)"

cooperate

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Reply to
Fred Abse

Yes, my point was that Unicode just describes the glyphs ("marks on paper") and doesn't try to ascribe meaning to any of them. E.g., U+0308 describes that diacrytical mark altenately as:

- double dot above (umlaut)

- Greek dialytika

- double derivative

- diaresis

I guess the first question is: what is the name for the "two dots above" which embeds *no* meaning as to usage or interpretation? E.g., I always understood diaeresis to mean "pronounce this as an additional syllable" and umlaut to be "change the *sound* typically associated with this (vowel)".

Are either/both of these "bad assumptions" on my part?

So, this is a case where you *can* put it on a consonant. Now, does that usage fall under my interpretation of the role of "diaraesis"? Or, does the description "SMALL LETTER ZHE WITH DIARESIS" take liberties with the term "diaraesis"? Or, is my interpretation of the term incorrect and "diaraesis" is actually the name for "two dots above"?

:>

You really have to wonder the sorts of folks who make a *career* out of this sort of thing! I've a tough enough time dealing with my "native tongue"... ;-)

Reply to
D Yuniskis

I still use 'em...

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Reply to
mac

Do your interobangs get in your eyes?

Reply to
JosephKK

"Properly speaking, the terms diaeresis and umlaut are not interchangeable, though speakers frequently use the term umlaut to refer to a diaeresis." -

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But if you use "trema", it can mean either.

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Reply to
Boudewijn Dijkstra

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!

Reply to
David Brown

Wikipedia claims "diaeresis" coming from Greek diaíresis: "taking apart", so whereas the "di" might mean "two", the remainder certainly doesn't mean "dots" :-)

Stefan

Reply to
Stefan Reuther

Ünited Stätes Toughens Image With Umlauts

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Reply to
Jim Stewart

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".

Ditto Solaris as "compose" has a key dedicated.

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

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 m em space ESC n en space ESC 1 '0' space ESC 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. 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? :>

Reply to
D Yuniskis

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

Right.

Reply to
David Brown

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!

Well, I use "naive" quite a bit. But, I also use "pedantic", "pathological", etc. far more often than is common in everyday speech (e.g., in some pathological cases, the algorithm...)

Desert Southwest. The reference to hispanic influence was the only germane portion of the comment (locality being irrelevant)

PNw == Pacific Northwest, etc.

Shirley you jest?

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

Yes, and the '.' after et al. -- though I can often cheat and just put it at the end of a sentence :>

I explicitly didn't mention the comma as it would *not* be in italics in any case.

I've had volumes A-E of TeX book series for 25 years, now. As well as somoe of the TeXniques publications.

I found TeX and latex too much work. I produce a *lot* of documentation and want to spend very *little* time doing so. I find FrameMaker to be a bit more productive than VP was but a bit more difficult to "trick" into doing things that are outside the mainstream. I am much more interested in quickly being able to import and annotate graphs, photos, schematics, etc. and the typography can just "be". I'm not concerned with pretty ligatures, etc. -- so long as folks can understand the *content* and I have some basic control over layout -- unlike HTML, etc. Goal is to convey information in a clear form -- not to build a monument to my typesetting skills! ;-)

--don

Reply to
D Yuniskis

=20

=20

=20

As many others have and will tell you, it is called catering to your = markets.

Tho' im murkin ev'n i resent typicull murkin willfull ignoreance.

Reply to
JosephKK

=20

is=20

in=20

are=20

write=20

you=20

user=20

=20

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

from=20

quality=20

=20

=20

=20

Reply to
JosephKK

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

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.

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Reply to
Boudewijn Dijkstra

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

I have "left windows" as a compose key.

Þïß îß whät ìt dõèß ;-)
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Reply to
Fred Abse

Nah! It's medication that makes you pee ;-)

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Reply to
Fred Abse

I thought it was the condition _caused_ by those medications.

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Reply to
Grant Edwards

you=20

Groovy. How did you remap that key so usefully?

Reply to
JosephKK

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