dieresis [Design]

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From: Stefan Reuther on 4 Mar 2010 12:49

D Yuniskis wrote:
> 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"?

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

Stefan

From: D Yuniskis on 4 Mar 2010 13:53

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".

> na�ve). 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? :>

From: Jim Stewart on 4 Mar 2010 13:48

From: David Brown on 4 Mar 2010 17:48

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
na�ve, and how often does that word turn up in writing?

Actually, since you mention Spanish, "se�or" would be another example.
Thunderbird's English language dictionary offers to correct "senor" to
"se�or" - 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".
>
>> na�ve). 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 "na�ve" should be spelt "na�ve", very
few people would write co�perate - 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.

> 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? :>

Right.

From: D Yuniskis on 4 Mar 2010 18:29

Hi David,

David Brown wrote:
> 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.

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!

> 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
> na�ve, and how often does that word turn up in writing?

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...)

> Actually, since you mention Spanish, "se�or" would be another example.
> Thunderbird's English language dictionary offers to correct "senor" to
> "se�or" - 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...

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

PNw == Pacific Northwest, etc.

>> (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".
>>
>>> na�ve). 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...

Shirley you jest?

> Of course, there is the other point that languages change over time.
> While many people would agree that "na�ve" should be spelt "na�ve", very
> few people would write co�perate - 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.

>>> 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.

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.

> 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.

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

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