RE: Much better Latin-1 keyboard for Windows
À 17:31 2004-07-27, Mike Ayers a écrit: Oddly, that was the pedantic explanation I sought. [Alain] Am I supposed to find this nice? Boy, is my face red. I used pedantic instead of pedagogic. My sincere apologies. [Alain] Accepted. Funny too! (^8 I invite all those interested to join ISO/IEC JTC1/SC35/WG1, which will again try to do this (13 years after the first try). [Mike] Does one need to be an ISO member to participate? [Alain] Accreditation must come from a national body of ISO indeed. [Alain] As I said in my previous mail, these definitions are not the best of definitions. The distinction is but intuitive, you have to see the diagrams where labeling makes the difference: SNIP/ [Mike] I don't have these diagrams. Are they published somewhere public? [Alain] Patrick gave reference to the French text that is guing to be revised with the English one, it is good. Alain LaBonté Québec
RE: Much better Latin-1 keyboard for Windows
À 18:24 2004-07-26, Mike Ayers a écrit: In less pedantic terms: SNIP/ Oddly, that was the pedantic explanation I sought. [Alain] Am I supposed to find this nice? Any national group is group 1 by definition according to ISO/IEC 9995. Group 2 is a Latin supplementary group to access those Latin-script-written languages not accessible with a national group 1 also using Latin script. Other groups are still not numbered and their actual access not standardarized. I am again baffled here. If any national group is group 1, then my U.S. keyboard layout, a German keyboard layout on a U.S. keyboard, a German layout on a German keyboard , and Michael's Irish Unicode setup, are all group 1? Certainly I misunderstand this. More pedantry, /si vous plais/. [Grammar teacher] si vous plais should be s'il vous plaît: literally in English if it you pleases, i.e. if it pleases you (^8= ), so it should please me? [Alain] Group 2 is fixed, but incomplete per se, and it needs a group 1, for one reason: it contains all accents used in ISO/IEC 6937, for example, but none of the basic 26 Latin letters to which these accents are supposed to apply. Now since we were never able to standardize the group numbering system (beyond 2 groups), and go beyond the Latin script (because of one American company opposing to this, or perhaps one individual working for an American company, in 1991), then group 1 is supposed to be *the* group which contains *the* 26 basic Latin letters and anything else that nationals judged necessary for their needs. This group cantaining the 26 Latin letters is *the* primary group as far as ISO/IEC 9995-3 (which defines group 2) is concerned. Now, as we know, even if the Latin script is perhaps used on all keyboards sold in the world (there might be exceptions, I don't know one), it is not the end of the world either (we knew it ot once -- I, for one, would have liked to at least standardize entry of Vietnamese letters since we were bound to the Latin script, but I was prevented to go beyond the ISO/IEC 6937 repertoire at the time). National keyboards *typically* need to support other scripts (at least 85% of this planet's inhabitants use a script other than the Latin, even if the Latin script is perhaps the script in which is written the biggest number of unrelated languages -- that creates other problems - like the problem of multiple groups for only one alphabet, the least of those problems). So there is a need to enhance the group selection model (the layout switching mechanism invented by an IBM team, in which was my respected friend and colleague Dr Umamaheswaran). I invite all those interested to join ISO/IEC JTC1/SC35/WG1, which will again try to do this (13 years after the first try). [ISO/IEC 9995-1] 4.13 level select: A function that, if activated, will change the keyboard state to produce characters from a different level. 4.10 group select: A function that, if activated, will change the keyboard state to produce characters from a different group. [/|/|ike] These definitions, as well as the definitions of level and group, don't seem to make particular distinction between the two. Does any hard distinction exist? [Alain] As I said in my previous mail, these definitions are not the best of definitions. The distinction is but intuitive, you have to see the diagrams where labeling makes the difference: on a key label, the levels [in one group] are in the same column [like on an American keyboard], and each group occupies it own colums (given the small room on one key, one could but imagine 3 groups labeled: group 1 to the left (like on an American keyboard [you will see that letters are typicaly not centered]), group 2 to the right, and group n in the center (like a group for Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese kanas, and so on). Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: Much better Latin-1 keyboard for Windows
À 02:38 2004-07-27, Doug Ewell a écrit: In what way are PC keyboards necessarily limited to 3 levels? I can easily construct a PC keyboard layout using MSKLC in which characters are assigned to Shift+AltGr keystrokes. In fact, the standard US-International keyboard comes like this. [Alain] I was mainly talking about labeling of keys, as the main difference between commercial keyboards is [so far¹] labeling (and the only difference between any national European or Canadian keyboard -- the American keyboard has one key less but even under the hood the electrical contact is there for the extra key, it is just never triggered because over it there is a larger key that bridges the gap). [Doug] Why does a 3-shift-state keyboard count as 1 group of 3 levels, but a 4-shift-state keyboard counts as 2 groups of 2 levels? What is the difference, other than the fact that ISO 9995 says there can only be 3 levels? [Alain] A 4-shift-state keyboard could be 2 groups of two levels (I was implicitly refering to Mark's case where he was talking of 2 languages each using its own alphabet, each one with letter pairs [Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, are perhaps the typical cases he was refering to]), or one group with 3 levels and one group with only 1 level (which would just be quite imbalanced). There is no restriction at all in the definitions of groups, it just makes sense to build them in a unified way, with some category belonging (but you could also decide that categories are just randomly defined, it's up to the implementer's imagination). Alain LaBonté Québec ¹ it would be nice if the computer could have a hint of what is engraved on keyboards, as indicated in skeleton ISO/IEC DTR 15440 (on future keyboards) under ballot, but this would require that the keyboards be queried for this and that they be giving a number back corresponding to a very precise layout without any option (not even a key position changed). So far, PC keyboards just send scan codes to the computer (regardless of what is engraved, regardless of key positions: this does not help software makers producing a nice user interface: just think about the diagram of the keyboard on a screen which might *not correspond* to the physical beyboard layout)
RE: Much better Latin-1 keyboard for Windows
At 13:00 2004-07-23, Mike Ayers wrote: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Alain LaBonté Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 5:39 AM [Alain] There is no « plane » at all in ISO/IEC 9995. This is ISO/IEC 10646 terminology, which also has a term called group, but it is not the same thing (and yet, you do not find the notion of plane, group, row and cell complicated while it is indeed multiple enough to make it more difficult to remember). I think you did not try hard to understand the concept of keyboard groups, even if I have explained it to you many times (^; I don't know about complicated, but I just don't understand the terms. I have read your explanation of keyboard groups, but I still don't quite grasp the meaning. Part of the problem is that your explanation includes other terms that I don't understand, either. Can you please point me to further, preferrably more pedantic explanations? [Alain] Here are the pedantic definitions of ISO/IEC 9995-1 (1994 version, which will be revised this year, most likely). There is no other notion than level and group: 4.12 level: A logical state of a keyboard providing access to a collection of graphic characters or elements of graphic characters. Usually these graphic characters or elements of graphic characters logically belong together, such as the capital forms of letters. In certain cases the level selected may also affect function keys. 4.9 group: A logical state of a keyboard providing access to a collection of graphic characters or elements of graphic characters. Usually these graphic characters or elements of graphic characters logically belong together and may be arranged on several levels within a group. The input of certain graphic characters, such as accented letters, may require access to more than one group. In less pedantic terms: a standard American keyboard layout is by itself a keyboard group composed of two levels (one unshifted, one shifted). a European national keyboard is by itself in general a keyboard group composed of three levels (one unshifted, one shifted, one obtained with AltGr). Any national group is group 1 by definition according to ISO/IEC 9995. Group 2 is a Latin supplementary group to access those Latin-script-written languages not accessible with a national group 1 also using Latin script. Other groups are still not numbered and their actual access not standardarized. Is it allright now? Definitions could be bettered, I know. Alain PS: I forgot: given that there are typically more than 1 shifted state on non-American keyboards, ISO/IEC 9995 talks about level select. (Shift key becomes Level 2 select, AltGr becomes Level 3 select -- now one can use synonyms, but ISO standardization may be used as a pivot for all the different synonyms in existence). Group select is just an extension when you need to go to other languages (other groups) or to more than 3 levels: 4.13 level select: A function that, if activated, will change the keyboard state to produce characters from a different level. 4.10 group select: A function that, if activated, will change the keyboard state to produce characters from a different group.
Re: Much better Latin-1 keyboard for Windows
À 11:15 2004-07-26, Mark Davis a écrit: a European national keyboard is by itself in general a keyboard group composed of three levels (one unshifted, one shifted, one obtained with AltGr). In practice, the keyboards I have seen with an additional level generally need and use a pair of additional levels. The issue is that if a lowercase character x is on a level, then you want to be able to get the uppercase version of it X by using that same level plus a shift key. So in practice you end up with plain, plain+shifted, alternate, alternate+shifted. [Alain] ... which means 2 groups of 2 levels in ISO terms. Commercial keyboards in Europe (at least those using the Latin script) are limited to 3 levels in general (3 states: unshifted, shifted, or AltGr state). In general the third level is for special characters and not for letter pairs. I'm just curious: what keyboards have you seen? Was it outside Europe or the two Americas? Or do you talk about virtual keyboards shown on a screen? Of course if one needs to use other script beyond the Latin script (or many languages), one must go beyond 3 levels, i.e. beyond one group. Alain LaBonté Québec PS: Canadian national standard CAN/CSA Z243.200-92 uses 2 groups strictly for the Latin script, the first group with 3 levels, the second group with 2 extra levels (if you want to *not use* the group notion, this means 5 shifted states, 5 levels; fortunately the ISO framework has limited groups to 3 levels at once).
RE: Much better Latin-1 keyboard for Windows
À 14:32 2004-07-26, Michael Everson a écrit: At 10:24 -0400 2004-07-26, Alain LaBonté wrote: In less pedantic terms: a standard American keyboard layout is by itself a keyboard group composed of two levels (one unshifted, one shifted). a European national keyboard is by itself in general a keyboard group composed of three levels (one unshifted, one shifted, one obtained with AltGr). And everyone who has used a Macintosh has been used to: plain shifted alt alt-shifted for twenty years. And that means US and European keyboard layouts. [Alain] Two groups of two levels each. No complication in this. However IBM PCs did something else, and their groups are limited to 3 levels. Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: Much better Latin-1 keyboard for Windows
À 11:40 2004-07-26, Doug Ewell a écrit: Mark Davis wrote: In practice, the keyboards I have seen with an additional level generally need and use a pair of additional levels. The issue is that if a lowercase character x is on a level, then you want to be able to get the uppercase version of it X by using that same level plus a shift key. So in practice you end up with plain, plain+shifted, alternate, alternate+shifted. Keyboards that follow this peculiar requirement of ISO 9995 (three levels but not four) pay a penalty when there are too many letters (accented or otherwise) to fit in Levels 1 and 2, and the national custom is *not* to use combining dead keys. Either the capital and small versions of a letter must be on different keys within the same level (Polish puts Ä' at AltGr+S and Ä at AltGr+D) or the capital letter is not assigned to a key at all (Italian has è and é but not à or Ã, which forces users to type E' when starting a sentence with It is). [Alain] There is no penalty, you can have as many groups as you want. Do not make a confusion with PC implementations which are limited to 3 levels in only one group, and where no group 2 is implemented. On the Canadian keyboard, typical upper and lower case French letters are available in group 1, but Scandinavian upper and lower case letters are available in group 2. (and in fact the French ligatures OE too). There is no penalty. Easy. Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: Much better Latin-1 keyboard for Windows
À 17:16 2004-07-22, Michael Everson a écrit: I've never understood this keyboard philosophy. Its groups and planes terminology just doesn't make sense to me (as someone who has designed keyboard layouts for well over a decade). I like good old-fashioned dead-keys and four keyboard states (plain, shift, alt, and alt-shift. [Alain] There is no « plane » at all in ISO/IEC 9995. This is ISO/IEC 10646 terminology, which also has a term called group, but it is not the same thing (and yet, you do not find the notion of plane, group, row and cell complicated while it is indeed multiple enough to make it more difficult to remember). I think you did not try hard to understand the concept of keyboard groups, even if I have explained it to you many times (^; The keyboard group concept is not new (a decade is relatively new in the world of keyboards, and the notion is a bit older than that), it was designed before ISO/IEC 10646 (as early as 1988) and it is not difficult to understand (you should have tried, as you heard about it before designing keyboards, as you say (^; )... I too, designed keyboards, since more than two decades¹, and I also have written keyboard drivers implementing group selection on PCs, as soon as I heard about the layer shifting concept. A group is just a keyboard layout of up two 3 levels (in general only 2, as for the US keyboard). The concept of group and group selection (called layer shifting by its two designers, Dr Umamahwesaran and one of his IBM colleagues, in 1986, if my memory is good) was taken into consideration by ISO with the intent to extend it to multiple groups. However the multiple group model, if it exists, has not been standarized yet and deployed fully in its modalities, but time may have come for this. For this we must rely on international standarization, not on the will of only one individual (everybody has ideas about keyboards, as I hardly learned since I began to work on our Canadian keyboard standard in 1985 -- it is a prowess to come to consensus on keyboard issues, but we did it in Canada [we adopted our standard unanimously, after long battles], and internationally, with success [also after long battles] -- however it needs everybody to try to understand each other's ideas and integrate them in harmony). With UNICODE/UCS now of age, this in our opinion would be highly desirable to go beyond international standardization of the Latin script support limited to some languages as now. [Michael] Please see the specification of the Irish Extended keyboard for Unicode, at http://www.evertype.com/celtscript/ga-keys-x.html [Alain] Every layout can be considered a group in the ISO model. What is lacking is standardization (taking all platforms into consideration) in what you write. Amitiés. Alain ¹ the first keyboard driver I developed was on an 8K (yes, 8192 octets of RAM only, not one more) Commodore PET, in machine language (6502 processor, I had to make my own assembler program before, and it too had to fit within 8K) where I had to care in real time about the row and column of the wires intersecting each key switch, to determine the keys that were being hit... Nowadays with PCs, the keyboard microprocessor does only this, and just sends a code (called scan code) to the main processor indicating that a key well identified has been hit (no need for the PC to watch in real time, since al this is put into a buffer before an interruption signal is sent to the PC). I made my first PC keyboard driver in 1982, a few months after the first IBM PC had been released with an Intel 8080 processor under the hood (August 1981 [they made an Assembler program at once, and I bought it immediately!]).
Re: Much better Latin-1 keyboard for Windows
À 02:32 2004-07-18, John Cowan a écrit: http://www.livejournal.com/users/gwalla/39856.html is a page about (and a link to) a truly excellent Windows keyboard driver that provides full access to the Latin-1 range but is completely compatible with the US-ASCII keyboard except for AltGr (the right Alt key). All non-ASCII characters and dead keys are available there: for example, to get à, one types AltGr-` followed by a. [Alain] My two cents: It would have been nice if this keyboard would have been based (for its second layout) on ISO/IEC 9995-3 International Standard. The latter is based on the following philosophy: -Group 1 is the national (or prefered layout) [in the USA that would be the standard US keyboard; in this case AltGr could be added to show exactly what « qwalla » documented in his first figure (it is obvioulsy what he prefers). Group 1 normally corresponds to unshifted, shifted and AlGr layouts (3 levels, called level 1, 2, and 3) -Group 2 is a supplementary group whose purpose is to supplement national usage for the Latin script, based on the ISO/IEC 6937 repertoire (roughly 330 Latin characters), for European languages using the Latin script. Subsets can be implemented [I would friendly recommend that « qwalla » slightly modify his figure 2 layout to fit with this international standard]. Group 2 needs a group select mechanism, which is so far left to implementation (it could be AltGr and AltGr+Shift to access the two levels described in this group in ISO/IEC 9995-3 -- however in this case that would not be sufficient for some keys of the Canadian Standard keyboard -- in at least one case we have 5 characters on the same key, see below how we do that). Canada included ISO/IEC 9995-3's group 2 in its Canadian Standard CAN/CSA Z243.200 (implemented as Canadian mutilingual keyboard in several versions of Windows -- and Win XP fully implements all the characters of the ISO/IEC 6937 repertoire, with Unicode encoding [keyboard layout standards are based on abstract characters, not on coding] ; all Macs sold in Canada with French language support provide this layout as their standard layout). Group 1 is of course our national standard layer. Most Canadian implementations on PCs dedicated the scan code used on US keyboards for the RightCtrl rather as a Group Select key to access Group 2 (which can be shifted itself to get access to Group 2 Level 2 characters [so up to 3 levels in group 1 if you have followed and up to 2 levels in group 2). Here is an example of commercial keyboard implementing the Canadian Standard keyboard with Group 2 limited to Latin 1 access (level conformance B -- full set is level conformance C [330 characters]): http://pages.videotron.com/alb/Z243200.jpg See also another older commercial implementation (with blue color to distinguish group 2 [levels 1 and 2] and red to distinguish group 1 level 3): http://pages.videotron.com/alb/Z243200c.jpg There is a joint Canada/Sweden project to present a new work item proposal at ISO to standardize (or offer guidelines) group selection mechanism (this has been tried in 1991, but that failed). With UNICODE/UCS now of age, this in our opinion would be highly desirable to go beyond international standardization of the Latin script support limited to some languages as now. If others are interested, please let me know, I convene ISO/IEC JTC1/SC35/WG1, which is responsible for keyboard international standardization. Our next meeting will be in November, most likely in Stockholm (fallback: Paris). In the meanwhile someone can also implement ISO/IEC 14755 (poor man's input method to enter UCS character with the help of any keyboard), a standard made in the mid 1990s (it is not a keyboard standard but could be useful for limited usage of special characters). John, could you please forward this to Livejournal, I do not subscribe to such online forums (I prefer email reflectors, due to a lack of time). Alain LaBonté Québec
RE: Changing UCA primar[l]y weights (bad idea)
Resent with a non-renegade email address... (^8= À 14:10 2004-07-09, Jony Rosenne a écrit: I think the problem is with the concept of default in this case. The default should be the basis for a specific tailoring, and as a last resort for scripts and letters that do not have specific weights, but each implementation should have it's own weights when it matters. Only rarely is the default useful in itself, except possibly for Latin based locales. [Alain] My two cents in this debate (in full support of this fundamental statement of Jony): there is no concept of default in ISO/IEC 14651, the International String Ordering Standard (by opposition to the UCA, this is a significant difference), as, in order to be conformant, one * s h a l l * declare a delta, even if it is only one line. Adaptation to the world cultures (at the limit, even to individual needs) is here the key. And even for Latin-based locales, the UCA default makes no complete sense for any Latin-script-written language in the world. Given that there is no such thing as a default according to the international standard, the debate is mostly futile in this context. It is a debate which looks to me like the well known my-father-is-stronger-than-yours debate. That said, Peter Kirk raised an important issue (that *could* be solved by applying a particular delta consistently): One Danish participant is Søren Holst and so called in the name field of his e-mails, but signs himself Soren in messages in English. If I type Soren into the name search box (in Mozilla 1.7), I get no matches. This is not what I expect, because to me, and to Søren himself when thinking in English, ø is a variant of o. (But actually Mozilla is inconsistent: when sorting it put Søren after Sonny but before Soshie.) [Alain] Mozilla (and for that purpose even Find in the most popular Microsoft products, which of course have nothing to do with Mozilla) does not seem to be smart enough to be *able* to correctly treat accented data consistently between searching and sorting. Mozilla (or Microsof products) does not do any accent decomposition for searching (and this is not an expected behaviour in French for my name [LaBonté] either even if é is but an accented instantiation of e, and not a separate letter), and only folds case (that's the best it seems to care doing). It would be much better to make sorting, matching and searching consistent with tailored tables of either the UCA or ISO/IEC 14651. Unfortunately that is not what happens in most products, except in some good search engines (Google, Altavista and the like, which are smart enough for this -- but are not tailorable, to my knowledge -- and there are slight differences in behaviour between Google and Altavista although it is very much better that Mozilla or MS products in all cases). There is probably a need for an international standard for searching that would just say that: searching should be consistent with sorting. Sometimes international standards do not need to be complicated. Simple ideas are great, but they seem intellectually so obvious that one would have to write it 100 times in its homework book to get them applied and fully understood (i.e. not only intellectually but in human-made tools as well). Alain LaBonté Québec
RE: Character identities
A 21:46 2002-10-29 +, Michael Everson a écrit : At 13:27 -0800 2002-10-29, Kenneth Whistler wrote: Michael asked: My eyes have glazed over reading this discussion. What am I being asked to agree with? Here's the executive summary for those without the time to plow through the longer exchange: Marco: It is o.k. (in a German-specific context) to display an umlaut as a macron (or a tilde, or a little e above), since that is what Germans do. Kent: It is *not* o.k. -- that constitutes changing a character. [Michael] Kent can't be right here. [Alain] However I agree with Kent. Let's say a text identified as German quotes a French word with an U DIAERESIS *in the German text* (a word like capharnaüm). It would be a heresy to show a macron in a printed text in this context. In French *nobody* uses this practice that is frequent in German handwriting (but not in printing, unless I am wrong). One has to respect characters for what they are. A U DIAERESIS is not a U MACRON even if its codepoint is shared with a German U UMLAUT that may be handwritten with a *vague* resemblance to a U MACRON. Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: RE: Character identities
A 22:21 2002-10-29 +, Michael Everson a écrit : At 15:56 -0600 2002-10-29, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is it complaint with Unicode to have a font where a-umlaut has a glyph of a with e above? What about a glyph of a-macron (e.g. a handwriting font for someone who writes a-umlaut that way)? Of course it is. Glyphs are informative. [Alain] (: If they are informative, they should inform, not disinform... (; Alain
Re: How to type sporadic Unicode (was: User interface for keyboard input)
A 10:48 2002-07-19 +0100, Martin Kochanski a écrit : Alt+X would have been a solution if it had been consistently implemented: but there are several different and incompatible implementations floating around. The fundamental problem is, as you pointed out, that CACF9 AltX could have five different meanings and there is no way for the software to guess. Even within Microsoft's own software, there are wide variations in behaviour (convert all previously-typed characters; convert all characters before the current cursor position; convert highlighted characters only); and there is sometimes an inverse operation provided (Unicode character to hex), but that is sometimes Alt+X and sometimes Alt+Shift+X. ISO 14755 looks promising. For those who don't make it their daily reading (or to show off my pitiful misunderstanding of it), it could be described as Use the Alt+nnn approach, but use Ctrl+Shift instead of Alt, to indicate hexadecimal digits. Am I right about this? [Alain] What you describe is an example. ISO/IEC 14755 does not prescribe the beginning sequence nor the ending sequence used to introduce and end the Ux identifiers. For the example you give (see section 5.1 of the International standard), it is said: Note:In the following examples, it is assumed here that the beginning sequence consists in the combined use of keys Level 2 Select and Control. The ending sequence corresponds to the releasing of these keys. This should only be considered as an example of implementation for these sequences. When I answered yesterday: A 09:26 2002-07-18 -0700, Addison Phillips [wM] a écrit : When I confronted this specific problem recently in our products, the main solution I adopted was to allow \u notation as input (of course, our products are for developers...) [Alain] That's an approach similar (I could even almost say conformant) to the one proposed in ISO/IEC 14755, Input methods to enter UCS characters with the help of a[ny] keyboard. then I told myself (that's why I wrote « I could even almost say conformant » -- that was too prudent, it is conformant) that the \u sequence here could be considered a beginning sequencce and the character SPACE an ending sequence. Alain LaBonté Project editor, ISO/IEC 14755 Québec
RE: User interface for keyboard input
A 09:26 2002-07-18 -0700, Addison Phillips [wM] a écrit : Hi Martin, I install the Chinese Unicode keyboard myself... When I confronted this specific problem recently in our products, the main solution I adopted was to allow \u notation as input (of course, our products are for developers...) [Alain] That's an approach similar (I could even almost say conformant) to the one proposed in ISO/IEC 14755, Input methods to enter UCS characters with the help of a[ny] keyboard. Alain LaBonté Québec
The exact birthday of French: 0842-02-14
A 11:39 2002-03-27 +, Michael Everson a écrit : On Wednesday, March 27, 2002, at 05:55 , Kenneth Whistler wrote: Nope. In some historical sense all natural languages are equally old (except those originating in creoles). [Michael] Um, we actually can date some languages, like French, for which we have the first documents written in it. But if linguistic change can be thought to be tidal [Alain] French (with a totally different spelling [and many more differences] compared to now: you have to pronounce letters like when you read Latin to *begin* to understand even if you're French-speaking) and modern German (well a form of it, perhaps with a remark very similar for reading the text as for French) were *officially* born the same day, on the 14th of February, 842 A.D. (is it one of the origins of Valentine Day?), in a bilingual peace treaty(*) between two grandsons of Charlemagne... Of course that was but the evolution of dialects that existed before, and which never ceased to considerably evolve since then, without very much notice of the change during one individual's life. I think that it is what Ken was trying to say. Alain LaBonté Québec _ *: Les serments de Strasbourg (see http://www.restena.lu/cul/BABEL/T_SERMENTS.html): « Les Serments se déroulent en deux temps et quatre mouvements. Deux petits-fils de Charlemagne, Louis le Germanique et Charles le Chauve, scellent une alliance contre leur frère aîné, Lothaire, héritier de la Lotharingie, c'est-à-dire le royaume intermédiaire entre celui de Louis (la zone germanique) et celui de Charles le Chauve (la zone française ). Les Serments se composent de quatre textes. Les deux textes romans (le serment de Louis le Germanique à son frère et la réponse des soldats (français ) sont suivis de deux textes en dialecte rhénan (le francique): le serment de Charles le Chauve et la réponse des soldats germaniques. Ainsi, les frères s'expriment chaque fois dans la langue de l'autre alors que les soldats parlent leur langue spontanée. C'est le signe d'une relative hétérogénéité culturelle des royaumes qui se traduit par un clivage linguistique en passe de devenir un clivage politique. Les Serments de Strasbourg sont le symptôme d'une fracture géopolitique et géolinguistique dans l'Europe du IXe siècle. Ils signalent la constitution de deux blocs: le Regnum (futur royaume de France) et l'Imperium (le futur Saint Empire romain qui se présente comme l'héritier du vieil empire romain de l'Antiquité). Ces serments ont été conservés grâce à un historien du Xe siècle nommé Nithard qui les a insérés tels quels dans son texte latin. » See http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/gallica/Chronologie/09siecle/Serments/ser_text.html for some texts written in modern characters... and for some translation: http://juillot.home.cern.ch/juillot/serments.html
Re: The exact birthday of French: 0842-02-14
A 11:05 2002-03-27 -0500, Elliotte Rusty Harold a écrit : At 8:47 AM -0500 3/27/02, Alain LaBontÈÝ wrote: [Alain] French (with a totally different spelling [and many more differences] compared to now: you have to pronounce letters like when you read Latin to *begin* to understand even if you're French-speaking) and modern German (well a form of it, perhaps with a remark very similar for reading the text as for French) were *officially* born the same day, on the 14th of February, 842 A.D. (is it one of the origins of Valentine Day?), in a bilingual peace treaty(*) between two grandsons of Charlemagne... Of course, this assumes that the year 842 and Charlemagne actually existed, which turns out to be not nearly as self-evident a proposition as it seems at first glance. See, for example, http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/Niemitz-1997.pdf or at Google in HTML: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:8VRf94MWzUgC:www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/Niemitz-1997.pdf+did+Charlemagne+existhl=en [Alain] Good attemps at a hoax!!! This document says: If 16 centuries had passed since Caesar's introduction of his calendar, the Julian calendar in Gregory's time would have been out of sync with the astronomical situation by 13 days, not 10. It is perhaps just a miscalculation and not a proof that 300 years were created out of nothing... Let me just notice that the difference in days between the Western European Christmas and the Orthodox Christmas is just that, 13 days!!! The Orthodox never did reform their calendar... They celebrate Christmas on January 7!!! Alain laBonté Québec
Re: Bad programs die quick; Bad data structures die hard.
A 21:39 2002-03-19 +, Michael Everson a écrit : At 06:32 +0900 2002-03-20, Dan Kogai wrote: Y2K is a good example. It was not program's bug but that of data representation. I don't understand why people are writing '02 and the like. Were they not paying attention? [Alain] Writing it in text is not a problem if context is known. Impressionists in the XIXth Century, for example, already signed their paintings with a format such as « Claude Monet 89 »(we know it was 1889). Not indicating the truncated information in data files used by dumb programs which can be exposed to a different context is another story. Losing information in data files -- whatever the nature of the data -- is always a problem over time... Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: Standard Conventions and euro
A 14:51 2002-02-28 +, Michael Everson a écrit : At 08:26 -0600 2002-02-28, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Portuguese escudos no longer exist. Perhaps not as physical currency, but they sure do still exist in data, and will continue to exist in data until the Apocalypse. When is that scheduled to occur? [Alain] Very simple: « la semaine des quatre jeudis » (the week of the 4 Thursdays, as we say in French). Alain LaBonté Québec
RE: Recent Threats
A 10:48 2002-02-27 +0100, Marco Cimarosti a écrit : What beats me, is how this discussion mutated to Canadian ethnology! [Alain] Since I started this sub-threa[d|t], it was to say that initial Canada, in the case Québec would become a country (something which is not impossible), would no longer, even partly, be part of Canada, then. This example may not be unique... By the way even Québec itself, now part of Canada, at some point, was much bigger than initial Canada and was also comprising many American States of today... Another map: http://iquebec.ifrance.com/cyberiel/quebec1774.gif (by curiosity see where Louisiana is on this map (!!! ... and it then belongs to Spain after having been part of New France down to the Gulf of Mexico [the capital was then the city of Québec too]). Canada and Québec are indeed good cases in point if you want to talk about fuzziness of borders... So the discussion started with stability of country codes... If a code represents a political territory, it can NOT be stable by nature, whether it is alphabetic or numeric. The only stability you can expect has to do with the non-reassignment of a code within a reasonable period, to a different body. Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: Recent Threats
A 08:48 2002-02-27 -0800, Doug Ewell a écrit : The relevance of all of this to Unicode (besides the link to internationalization) is that, unlike ISO 3166, Unicode has a policy that forbids changing the name or position of a character once it has been assigned. [Alain] And of course there is no precedent... (; I could not resist... Alain
Re: ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move
A 14:42 2002-02-27 -0500, John Cowan a écrit : It is often suggested that meaningless identifiers are more stable than Real World names. I would point out that while no meaningless identifier has been in use for as much as two centuries, [Alain] What about phone numbers, postal codes, street numbers, to quote but the most obvious meaningful identifiers? Alain LaBonté My town's name changed on January first, since the town merged with the city of QC Office postal code G1R 5R8... Moving home on May 1st from G1G 3R8 to G2J 1P6... Yes, CA [not California, please (; ] postal codes use a mix of letters and digits (letter digit letter space digit letter digit) Current coordinates: 46° 53' N -- 71° 17' O (stable at least for a day, I hope)
Re: ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move
A 13:16 2002-02-26 -0500, John Cowan a écrit : If Germany can maintain the lex sanguinis into the 21st century, [Alain] I was recently told that this principle was abolished in Germany at the very very end of XXth Century. And that sounds good news indeed... Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move
A 21:42 2002-02-24 -0800, Doug Ewell a écrit : The problem with the Romania alpha-3 change is that here is a country that not changed its name, its system of government, its political status, or its boundaries. All we know is that the change from ROM to ROU was made following a request of the Government of Romania. We are told nothing about the nature of the request or its rationale. Indeed, the only immediately obvious advantage of ROU is that it provides a better mnemonic code for the *French* name of the country, Roumanie. (The Romanian word for Romania is Romania.) [Alain] I may risk a bold explanation since you talk about French. ROM may perhaps suggest the French term romanichel which means gipsy (25% of Romanians fluently speak French, and a lot of others have a certain understanding of it). As a good deal of gipsies come from this area (but not exclusively from Romania [or Rumania]), perhaps the R[o|u]manians are embarrassed. Who knows? What is the word for gipsy in Romanian? How is « Romania » pronounced in Romanian? In TIME magazine, some years ago, did I dream when I also saw that they wanted their country to be called Rumania rather than Romania in English (or is it the other way around -- I maybe mixed up with this)? In French it is « Roumanie » already indeed and in German « Rumänien » (a lot of Romanians speak German too -- their language is perhaps midway between German and French too -- to me Romanian seems to have a story similar to French, it is originally Latin spoken by Germanic people [in the case of Romania, by Germanic mercenaries, a long time ago]). Alain LaBonté Québec
RE: ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move
A 15:33 2002-02-25 +0100, Marco Cimarosti a écrit : Alain LaBonté wrote: [...] Who knows? What is the word for gipsy in Romanian? [...] Rom, in fact: I just asked this to a Rumanian colleague. And, as I hinted at before, it is also the Rumanian for rum (or ron, rhum: the pirates' liqueur, anyway). [Alain] So we were both guessing right... But we are both in the Latin camp, so it might be the reason why we immediately thought that kind of way! Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: Stability in standards
A 08:41 2002-02-25 -0800, Doug Ewell a écrit : I am reminded of the initial resistance on the part of Canada Post against assigning the abbreviation NU to the new territory of Nunavut, on the basis that nu is French for nude and that some French speakers with sensitive ears might be offended. [Alain] It's generally quite foreign to the French (and even more nowadays in Québec) culture to be offended by nudity... (; However being tout nu (all nude) is a bit synonym of of being poor, so maybe it is the Inuits who felt humiliated... PET, the abbreviation of Pierre-Elliott Trudeau (ex-ultra-arrogant-Prime Minister of Canada), was fare more laughable and the guy did not seem to care (« pet » mean « fart » in French)... Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move
A 12:30 2002-02-25 -0500, John Cowan a écrit : http://iquebec.ifrance.com/cyberiel/ProvCanada.jpg IIRC it was a Huron who, when asked where he and the Cartier expedition were, replied kanata = at the village, thus beginning what is certainly the most massive extension of a name in human history. [Alain] This story is quite correct (and he was near Île d'Orléans when he was answered this [the center of the map indeed], an island which Cartier then called « Île de Bacchus » because vine was growing there naturally). Are you sure it was a Huron though (Huron is an Iroquoian language -- although it is true that even if the Hurons lived quite far from this area, their language was the lingua franca of the whole of North Eastern North America, as they were the traders par excellence, even if they were sedentarian in their home land of the Great Lakes)? When Cartier stopped his 1535 trip in Stadaconé (now part of the city of Québec), Stadaconé was indeed an Iroquoian village (but not Huron per se, we know this -- however the first Amerindian he met in Gaspé -- 1000 km even more to the East -- were Hurons indeed, we know this). Later on, in 1608, when Champlain founded the city of Québec, no trace of any Iroquoian village out there (nobody knows what happened in the meanwhile)... Montagnais (the Innus, who were then nomad, an Algonquian tribe) had completely replaced their village by camps (they were also sporadically present all over the territory in 1535)... It is Samuel de Champlain who brought the Hurons (his allies) to the city of Québec under his protection (where they still live in the suburbs [currently a deluxe federal reservation -- but in fact no different from the surrounding suburbs in appearance] of 8endake [Wendake] -- the other only group of Hurons remaining being in Oklahoma City -- as the Hurons have been massacred by their Iroquois « cousins » near Lake Huron in the XVIIth Century [they lived around the current town of Sault-Ste-Marie originally - then called Ste-Marie-au-pays des-Hurons]). So I don't know, you maybe right, it might be an Iroquoian word after all... but I'm still not sure... Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move
A 14:59 2002-02-25 -0500, John Cowan a écrit : In Brantford, Ont. there is a tourist attraction called Kanata Iroquois Village, showing that the word is surely Iroquoian in origin. [Alain] According to http://www.autochtones.com/fr/culture/toponymie.html#canada, a page done by the Amerindians, apparently, the word Canada is not only iroquoian, it is an Iroquois word. So seems that you were right, it is not Algonquian like the word Québec is. Alain LaBonté Québec
8endat
A 14:59 2002-02-25 -0500, John Cowan a écrit : So say my sources, but such matters of nationality are often vague after 450 years. Note that the Huron of Canada are the Wyandot(te) of the U.S., and are to be found not only in Oklahoma but also in Kansas, though not recognized there by the U.S. government. 8endake is apparently the Huron/Wyandot name for their original homeland. [Alain] In 8endake, the Huron village (6 or 7 km from my home) lives the 8endat nation (you write wyandot in English, where the French Jesuites wrote 8endat [i.e. wendat]. 8endat = Huron indeed). Alain LaBonté Québec PS the 8' is a Greek ligature, in fact an u (psilon) on top of an o (omicron), so 8 is an abuse, the character is completely open on its top. The actual character is encoded in Unicode/UCS. The 8endat language also uses a Greek theta in addition to the usual Latin letters...
Re: ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move
A 14:21 2002-02-24 -0500, John Cowan a écrit : As I understand it, this request is more of a command. The only fully stable codes in 3166 are the numeric ones. [Alain] Not even... For example, if Québec (a territory currently 3 times as big as France) eventually became a country it would have its code... and the current numeric code for Canada would designate a different territory... Would that mean even a different numeric code for the new country designated as Canada? Asking the question is kind of answering it, I believe. See the map I rebuilt (almost exact, with the data I had) of the original territory called Canada(*) in 1535 (if Québec formed a new country and became a republic, the original Canada -- a province of the kingdom of France, then part of New France, a very small part of it which had a radius of roughly at most 150 km around the city of Québec -- would no longer be part of what would remain of Canada, now a constitutional monarchy whose symbolic head of state lives in Buckingham Palace): http://iquebec.ifrance.com/cyberiel/ProvCanada.jpg Alain LaBonté Québec * : Canada is an algonquian word meaning group of cabins, very small village Kébec is an algonquian word meaning where waters become narrow
Re: [Very-OT] Re: ü
A 08:13 2002-01-23 -0500, John Cowan a écrit : Middle French spelling is very unphonemic. This is the so-called aspirated h, which still blocks liaison even though it is quite silent now. [Alain] Not only quite, but absolutely mute, one must not be so shy. We use the word aspirated to distinguish them from all other mute h's just because the h has an effect on pronunciation, but the h itself is never pronounced in French. Example of aspirated h (they are exceptional anyway) in French : « des héros » (which means « [some, many] heroes »)... pronounced « day 'ayro » (which distinguishes the words from « des zéros » (« dayzayro »), which means « [some, many] zeroes ». Alain LaBonté Québec
RE: [Very-OT] Re: ü
A 16:18 2002-01-23 -0800, Yves Arrouye a écrit : Obviously (I advocate in French changing the spelling of common foreign words so that there would be more consistency). Le ouiquende? That would be pronounced wikãd... To respect the English pronunciation you would have to write it ouiquennde, which would still be a very odd spelling in French... The end sound is really not French in itself... France's Académie française is good at that: they recently invented cédérom (CD-ROM; gets used because it's quite okay), and mèl (mail, for e-mail; nobody uses it except to make fun of it). [Alain] Mel is a horrible and hypocritical abbreviation of Messagerie électronique recommended in the French government. It is recommended not to use it as a noun. However some people in France used to say email and now say mel in spite of the recommendation not to pronounce the abbreviation. Québec invented the (French-sounding) word courriel (for courrier électronique)... It is more and more used in France too. For one, I must also confess that I personally write the word cédérom (the sounds no not shock a French speaker and the spelling either -- wile email pronounced ee-mail [iméle or imèle] in French, is horribly schizophrenic) although the word will probably disappear over time [regardless of its spelling], as well as the word microsillon (33 RPM records)... Using generic names (such as disque for CD-ROM, relatively technology-independent), was a good evolution in languages (we use one word for all tables, it distracts to change words just because the shape changes, if the intent is to describe a function). It seems that nowadays we put more and more accent on technology, on how things are made, rather than on their destination (functionality). It is perhaps a sociological fact that I find interesting to notice. Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: [Very-OT] Re: ü
A 00:35 2002-01-23 +, Michael Everson a écrit : At 18:30 -0500 2002-01-22, Patrick Andries wrote: Obviously (I advocate in French changing the spelling of common foreign words so that there would be more consistency). Le ouiquende? That would be pronounced wikãd... To respect the English pronunciation you would have to write it ouiquennde, which would still be a very odd spelling in French... The end sound is really not French in itself... Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: French uppercase accented letters (was: Re: Comments on FCD 5218)
A 12:34 2001-11-29 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : Sorry about the previous message. I hit Send Now by accident while trying to select some text. In a message dated 2001-11-29 8:58:42 Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This in turn led to the myth that the French do not use uppercase accented letters... Please spread the word. My French colleagues are frustrated and embarassed by the continued propagation of this unfortunate myth. Unfortunately, I have seen this myth written in some relatively authoritative sources, including some from France. For my part I am glad that it is not true, as it created yet one more annoying difference between French French vs. Canadian French that did not have to exist. [Alain] French has the same history on both sides of the Atlantic (it is a normalized language and we all recognize it among francophones). That said, it is true that there has always been a usage for unaccented uppercase initials of sentences (or proper names), on both sides of the Atlantic indeed, and for consistent accentuation, regardless of case. And the typographic convention of both usages always coinhabited (depending on the competence of typographists and their school of thought)... The sad habit not to use accents on capitals, however, has been reinforced since the appearance of accents in French at the Renaissance by 3 factors: -stone carvers did not want to scrap their job with those minute inovations; -in the XIX th Century and up to the second part of the XXth Century, mechanical typerwiters had problems with the dual placement of accents on lowercase/capital and hence it was technically resolved to ignore the problem and not provide a way to put them on capitals, more rarely used, in any way, than lowercase (which is certainly more true than in German); -because of the embarrassment caused by the latter, teachers have taugh (on both sides of the Atlantic) in the XXth Century, that one should not put accents on capitals. In the meanwhile good typography practice, consistence in data processing, and pure logic, call for the giving up the bad practice of having a different spelling in upper and lower case. Furthermore, to those who observe well, all the headings of dictionary entries only use capital letters, typically, in the main French dictionaries (now without accents, those words would not be good French spelling and dictionaries are there for this reason, among others). Ask your relatively authoritative sources if they ever opened a Larousse or Robert dictionary. If they answer yes, ask them what they observe... (; Alain LaBonté Québec
Fwd: Re: Inuktitut, Cree, Ojibwe input methods?
Relayed FYI. Alain Kona Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 08:52:54 -0500 Subject: Re: Inuktitut, Cree, Ojibwe input methods? From: Ray Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Alain Labonté [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reality Check! It would be impossible to have a single layout. This is really a locale issue and not a regional (i.e. Canada) one. This would require an extensive survey. Essentially there are 7 main language groups using syllabics: Blackfoot Carrier Cree Inuktitut Naskapi Ojibway Slavey Historically each band created their own font and keyboard layout. The character sets may be different as well. For example, I would expect to have possibly 4 different Cree character sets and keyboard layouts - one for each of the main bands. (Cree is the most geographically diverse aboriginal language - from Saskatchewan to Quebec) This is less of a problem for Inuktitut, as they tend to have regional authorities that speak with a single voice (i.e. the territorial government of Nunavut, and the region of Nunavik). Just the same, the two locales use different character sets and different keyboard layouts (and different sort orders!). This is not a dialectical problem (for example James Bay coast and Ungava Bay coast are dialectically different but they use the same characters and keyboard). We just managed to get Northern Quebec standardized on a SINGLE keyboard layout (where there were at least 3 before). Also, there is a very active movement to adopt syllabics where they were not previously used. While it is not likely that any new characters will be needed (but I am not a linguist, so I cannot say), You can be pretty sure they would be implementing a unique keyboard layout (as is the case currently with Northern Manitoba Cree) and sort order. By the same token, it would be impossible to have a default UCAS sort that would be useful to anyone (other than programmers maybe). Each language may share the syllabic glyphs but sort them differently. (This is perhaps the biggest flaw in UCAS - it saved space but creates headaches for each of the unique languages if you actually want to implement it. - I don't think this is a big enough issue to change it, though - at least not yet :) In other words, this is still very much an evolving and complex picture. Also keep in mind that users will not readily change the way they type. (I learned DVORAK, but could never type error-free and fast enough - I would keep reverting to QWERTY). Once the neuromuscular pathways are established they are very hard to undo. What I do not understand is that this information should have been one of the initial responses to any enquiries by any CSA/SCC work (or at least by CASEC). To me I see a very big gap in what is out there and what looks like the historical sources of the current knowledge in here. (Like, did anyone ask the users, or did all the data come from the Canadian Bible Society :) Cheers, Ray
Re: Shape of the US Dollar Sign
A 09:31 2001-09-28 -0700, Michael \(michka\) Kaplan a écrit : I tend to look up on the following site, where such info can always be found tucked away: http://www.uselessknowledge.com/word/dollar.shtml [Alain] Curiously enough, to add to even more useless and even misleading knowledge, I will add my two cents: in Québec, we have a hero (during a certain marxist-leninist period in Québec, some said he was a bandit, that made him more proletarian [this idea of a few intellectuals to deprecate our heroes is now folklore]), Dollard des Ormeaux (Adam Dollard des Ormeaux was his complete name), whose first name is pronounced Dollar (it is usual in French that ending consonants are mute) and who was killed in the Long Sault battle by his own mistake (but that mistake generated an explosion so violent that the Iroquois abandoned their will to attack Montréal). Needlesss to say, Québec (which is not very monarchist, it's a euphemism) celebrates each year « la fête de Dollard » (Dollard Day) the same day other Canadians celebrates Victoria Day, in May. I guess that in a few years, we'd rather celebrate « la fête du dollar » (the dollar day) instead, as less and less people know their history. See http://www3.primary.net/~dollard/ormeaux.htm (English text). Of course we have other heroes like this entrenched in North-American history: Radisson (whose name is pronounced with a French ending nasal « on », not with the English syllable « son »), indeed, is not only a hotel chain, but a Quebec hero who discovered upper Mississipi, but also sold his soul for a few dollars back and forth to the king of England and the king of France: Pierre-Esprit Radisson, a Frenchman born in 1651, was indeed at the origin of the British (now Canadian) Hudson Bay Company (Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson), which still makes many dollars... after having sold the North West Territories (and what is now Nunavut) to Canada... Alain LaBonté Toronto Airport
Re: (SC22WG20.3355) Talking about cultures, see this
REF. : http://www.harper.cc.il.us/mhealy/g101ilec/namer/nac/nacnine/na9intro/nacninfr.htm Deux critiques intéressantes et faites indépendamment l'une de l'autre (une faite de Berlkeley, californie, l'autre de Winnipeg, Manitoba) sur la thèse des 9 nations... Two interesting comments made independently one from the other (one from Berkeley, California, the other from Winnipeg, Manitoba) on the 9-nations thesis: À 10:03 01-03-14 -0800, Kenneth Whistler a écrit: Alain, It needs some serious updating. The pop culture correspondences, in particular, are now badly dated. Alaska is not part of Ecotopia, by the way. It belongs in the Empty Quarter, though some Ecotopians fight over it. The right wing fascist militia communities are associated with the Empty Quarter, too -- not Ecotopia. Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, etc. The division of California seems about right to me, but the division of Texas is a little strange. The definition of Dixie is out of date. The confederate flag is definitely on the way out -- it has been removed from all state flags but one now. The Foundry is also somewhat strangely defined. Detroit the capital of a region that includes New York, Chicago, and Toronto? That's a bit of a stretch to try to fit a preconceived notion onto the geography. If I was cutting things up, I would define the Eastern megalopolis (Washington DC to Boston/Manchester) as a nation unto itself, imposing its new reality on the underlying substrate of Dixie (in Maryland) to New England. --Ken See http://www.harper.cc.il.us/mhealy/g101ilec/namer/nac/nacnine/na9intro/nacnin fr.htm It dates back to 1981, the thesis of an American named Joel Garreau. It is the theory of the 9 nations that form North America.___ À 22:17 01-03-14 -0600, Jean Corriveau a écrit: Oui, la carte présentée englobe tout le Canada (sauf le Québec) parmi les nations américaines. Ceci montre bien donc l'absence de culture canadienne et la réalité d'une nation québécoise. Cependant l'auteur de cette classification démontre un degré d'ignorance du Canada. Voici trois indices: 1. L'auteur fournit une description sommaire pour chacune des neuf dites nations, sauf pour le Québec. Pas un seul mot pour la Nation du Québec! Quoi en penser? 2. La carte géographique sur sa page ne montre que la partie sud du Canada. Ceci suppose que le but était de classifier les nations sur le territoire américain. Le territoire sud du Canada semble avoir été ensuite inclu à la hâte. Par exemple, la nation du Québec a été mal tracé. En effet, si vous remarquez bien, l'auteur n'y a pas inclu la Gaspésie au Québec! Je remarque que l'auteur a basé sa classification des neuf nations sur des caractéristiques d'économie et d'industries -- d'où son erreur. Et la culture, dans ça? Vraiment, mettre la Gaspésie dans une nation de New England? Ça va pas, non? 3. Le sub-est du Manitoba n'appartient pas à la nation Bread-basket (voir sa carte) à cause de la présence francophone concentrée dans la région. Les erreurs ci-haut sont causées par la supposition de l'auteur qu'une nation est identifiée par son éconimie et industries. Des fois, j'image, une nation peut être fortement définie par cela, mais il faut nuancer (je ne peut pas me prononcer sur le cas des États-Unis). Une classification basée sur la culture et l'histoire serait plus juste. Par exemple, plusieurs pensent que les quatres provinces des prairies forment une nation. Or ce n'est pas vrai! Ce n'est pas parce que la culture du blé est commune à l'Alberta, la Saskatchewan et le Manitoba que ces provinces forment une nation. Que penser des fermiers francophones du sud-Manitoba? Je vous garantie qu'ils ne s'identifient pas à l'Alberta, malgré que tous deux consomment la même culture américaine, mais pas tout à fait en même quantité. Sauf pour la Gaspésie et le sub-Manitoba, la carte des nations de l'auteur demeure correct c-à-d que tout le Canada, mais excepté Québec, font partis de nations américaines. Jean, Winnipeg
Talking about cultures, see this surprising thesis
See http://www.harper.cc.il.us/mhealy/g101ilec/namer/nac/nacnine/na9intro/nacnin fr.htm It dates back to 1981, the thesis of an American named Joel Garreau. It is the theory of the 9 nations that form North America. Alain LaBont Qubec
Re: Teletext mappings
About this topic, please note (for what it's worth) that I did such a mapping a while ago, in the making of Canadian standard CAN/CSA Z243.4.1 (Ordering standard for French and English) and CAN/CSA Z243.230 (Localization parameters for French and English as used in Canada). It is possible that I goofed for some characters though, in absence of any clue, particularly for non-spacing characters and particularly because I went beyond Telelex, including NAPLPS CS (North American videotex character set, still in use). Dr Umamaheswaran revised this data at IBM but I don't know if this company had better data than I had and for which I had to make some bold decisions, I must admit (decisions not challenged for years)... If there is somebody guilty of any mistake in those standards, I am... In those standards I mapped all characters using U notation... Alain LaBont, Qubec Page personnelle : http://www.iquebec.com/cyberiel
Re: Transcriptions of Unicode
À 06:16 2001-01-15 -0800, Charles a écrit: Michael Everson wrote: The pronuncuation ['juni:ko:d] with [i:] or [i] instead of schwa irritates me a lot. No one would pronounce universe with an [i]. [Charles] I beg to differ; universe is commonly pronounced with a short [i] in the English Midlands. [Alain] A schwa for an i and an English u to pronounce Unicode begins to be extremely different from the pronunciation of Unicode in French (as I can't write with the IPA on this list, I will add German Ünicod to Marco's ynicod to make sure that most of you know how we pronounce it). This word, in its written form, shocks nobody in French (« et ce n'est pas peu dire ! »), even the most bigot and pious purists of the French language... But if you insist that the French speakers pronounce those two letters, it is the contrary, we will have to write the mandated IPA prononciation as « Iouneucôde » in French (there is no real scwha in French, imho)... Otherwise you create a strong issue in French. Please do not play with pronunciation... Unicode is not a standard about pronunciation, but rather -- and it is where it is an instrument of civilization -- a standard about writing... Writing tends to unite people, spoken languages tend to disunite them... An English speaker with a prefect knowledge of written French who does not pronounce French correctly is absolutely not understood, and the reverse is probably true too. I am a watcher of some American TV programs (mainly sci-fi) on TV, but I have to put subtitles to fully catch what I don't understand (unfortunately there is no subtitle in a meeting where English is spoken, and it is *always* a handicap to me). Please, no official IPA transcription for Unicode... Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: Transcriptions of Unicode
13:27 2001-01-15 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a crit: My argument for the world converging on dutch as the only language that is written as it is spoke. Vic You really believe that Schiphol is written as pronounced ? (; (: Alain __ ifrance.com, l'email gratuit le plus complet de l'Internet ! vos emails depuis un navigateur, en POP3, sur Minitel, sur le WAP... http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/email.emailif
Re: [OT] Close to latin
À 04:15 2001-01-03 -0800, John Cowan a écrit: On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, Antoine Leca wrote: I am a bit biased here, but I believe that spoken French is much less weird than _written_ French is (is there many languages where spelling contests is one of the most viewed TV programs?) [John] Written French is indeed remote from spoken French, but on the other hand is much closer to the other written Romance languages. If French were written as spoken, hardly a word would be recognizable to speakers of Spanish, Italian, ... or even English. Since much of interlinguistic communication is in writing, this is significant. [Alain] I fully agree with this view. And that is the reason why French spelling has been conservative since 2/3 centuries (as Patrick said, before it was much simpler, the written French was complexified voluntarily at this time to make it closer to its Latin and Greek roots). I will be offline for the next three days. Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: [langue-fr] L'anglais est-il une langue universelle ?
the most are Amerindians from Québec, *and by far*. In fact the French, when they arived here in 1534, instead of assimilating the Ameridians, self-assimilated to them until 1608. It is but when Champlain arrived here that he founded a French city, the city of Québec, my city, and he immediately made the Amerindians his allies (he even established the Hurons here, the Hurons that have been genocided by the Mohawks in their native land around the Great Lakes in the XVIIth Century -- the other Hurons who ecaped live in Oklahoma City, perhaps 2000 km from the city of Québec, in the other direction). All previous attempts failed because the French (who disliked the feudal system in Europe) prefered the free mode of life of Amerindians. So when Champlain arrived, his task was easy. All the Frenchmen who had stayed here spoke Amerindian languages, and some Amerindians already spoke French. The French never lived in apartheid with the Amerindians, but the British did. After the Paris treaty (1763) which ended the 7-year war (the Americans call this war the French and Indian war, it is the same thing) and gave New France to Britain, the British did establish an apartheid system, and most problems with the Amerindians come from this (it is a racist system that teh Canadian government [to distinguish from the Québec government] is still maintaining, but even the Amerindians hae difficulty to get out of it as it gives them rights that others don't have -- they are being paid to saty in reservations, they lose that right if they go outside even to merely work)... What would have it been if the French would have stayed -- there was the French Revolution just 26 years later, which abolished the feudal system -- is just speculation. In other countries where the French were, there has been native assimilation too, but it was not due to apartheid, but rather due to education, possibly repressive (as it has been represssive in Canada afgainst both the Amerindian languages and the French language -- even at teh beginning of the XXth Century, French teaching was prohibited in all Canadian provinces except Québec -- the same for Amerindian languages -- it was even prohibited to speak French in streets in Manitoba -- Manitoba, from a vast majority of French speakers at teh end of the XIXth Century, has near to zero today -- maybe not a physical genocide, but certainly a cultural one). This is, as you say, historical. We can not change the past. But Québec has been amonfg the first governments in the Americas to honourably sign traeties with the Amerindians for the development of resources (compare the billions of dolars given to some few thousands of Crees for development of hydro-electric projects in New Québec in 1976 with the simple occupation of native lands in British Columbia for timber cutting, or the total annihilation of tne Metis people in the West last Century (btw the Metis spoke French) by the Royal (yes, British Royal!) Canadian Mounted Police. But as you say, this is historical. [Darya] I dont go deeper in this discussion but we should all be relaxed and respect each human being in his peaceful manner. [Alain] I agree. [Darya] Whats better than to get wisdom. Wisdom you receive by learning and even by learning a new language. I have great respect for people who are willing to learn. I wish you and all other a happy new year. [Alain] Reciprocally, Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: [langue-fr] L'anglais est-il une langue universelle ?
À 13:19 2000-12-30 +0100, Darya Said-Akbari a écrit: Bon jour Alain, I honestly had not the strength to read your whole email. [...] Now it would be unfair from me when I would go into a deeper discussion with you, until I really understand what you mean. So please tell me in four five sentences, what you want to say. I promise you that I will not be unfair in our upcoming discussion. [Alain] The text, as I said many days ago, was not from me (and I was never able to know who was the actual author). I posted it because it was talling favourably about Unoicode, but it was also talking in bad terms about English while its message was to say that English was not the universal language that so many assume it to be. Perhaps -- and I agree -- the way to say that was not pedagogic nor diplomatic at all, but it indicated a frustration that is felt by many on the net -- English also being seen explicitly or implicitly as an agressor by non-English speakers. I should perhaps not have posted it as I was perceived as the author (I had not indicated from day 1 that the text was not mine, and that is of course my fault). It is now almost established that the author was an English-speaking native or at least somebody who masters it almost perfectly, which is obviously not my case. In passing, here is a counter-example of an aggression against my language, French (now some will say it is normal, the site is in Canada): http://www.idiotdriveralert.com/ « Important notice: The official language of this site is English/Anglais. Any posts or comments en francais will be deleted. Sorry. For further information, see the FAQ page. » I'm used to that kind of offensive statements against the use of my language or others. It is possible that the author does not even think it is offensive -- the FAQ is milder -- but it is explicitly offensive to me. Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: [langue-fr] L'anglais est-il une langue universelle ?
À 13:18 2000-12-30 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit: « Important notice: The official language of this site is English/Anglais. Any posts or comments en francais will be deleted. Sorry. For further information, see the FAQ page. » H!!! another Aussie who received culture in British Columbia, land of the multiple murders. Happy New Year. Reciprocally, Alain __ Vous avez un site perso ? 2 millions de francs à gagner sur i(france) ! Webmasters : ZE CONCOURS ! http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/concours.emailif
Re: [langue-fr] L'anglais est-il une langue universelle ?
À 05:45 2000-12-21 -0800, Elizabeth J. Pyatt a écrit: So again, I ask - other than pointing out that there are non-English speakers in North America and around the world, what message would you like to send to Unicode? [Alain] I did answer this question many times since yesterday. Reread my messages. I have nothing to add. I sent this text but I never thought it would generate so many reactions. I add that it is not my text but I can see that in addition to the provocation it perhaps contains truths that many do not want to see at all... If I had known I would not have sent this text to this list... But anyway, it is done, it was read, it probably led to the effect that the actual author -- almost certainly an English-speaking native -- wanted to produce. Alain LaBonté Québec
Multiple internets
À 21:13 2000-12-20 -0800, Tex Texin a écrit: Actually, I didn't find the suggestion of multiple internets all that bad, although there would need to be some cross-over capabilities. There are already other proposals for splinter groups, for higher bandwidth or greater security. As more of my web searches return irrelevant pages, splintering starts to look good. Put all the porn on its own net... What's wrong with an all French net? When I watch TV, the station doesn't suddenly change languages... (Well most of them don't...) Of course it should all be in Unicode. I am not advocating an all ISO 8859-15 net... [Alain] Multiple internets already exist, they are called intranets, and I personally don't like them (even my employer was not able to force me to use the proprietary choice of environment that he made). But for security reasons, intranets have their place, of course. Completely disconnected, I see them, only for security reasons, when necessary. That said, we should never assume that communications within two countries is uniformly what we think it is. Last week, I succeeded -- with the help of the Internet -- to retrieve an old Chinese friend (born in Beijing, 3 years younger than me) from whom I no longer had news (since 6 years). This guy is like a little brother to me (he taught me Mandarin for 3 years and I went to China with him and a group of friends on vacation for 5 weeks in 1987 -- we have been friends for years in the city of Québec)... He is now in Hong Kong. However, communicating with him in French -- and it would have been the same with Chinese -- is a nightmare... See what he wrote today: "A propos ,il n'y a pas de logiciel francais dans mon ordinateur, donc, ce que tu m'a ecris se parait comme celui d'un extraterreste qui ecrit en francais et en meme temps leur propre caracteres.je devinne quand meme le sense. La solution est de utiliser les lettres anglais pour ecrire en francais." Disregard the bad style. He says that we have to use unaccented letters (English letters, he calls them!) to write in French and that what he is seeing on his screen is like extraterrestrial script (probaly Chinese characters intermixed with Latin letters) and that he is able to guess anyway what I am saying. This is painful, as painful as trying not to put dots over i's when you write a manuscript letter (try tgis, you'll get a headache -- that's an exercise we do in graphologic circles, a hobby of mine)... I would much like to communicate with him using Unicode. However that's a game that has to have two participating players (and he is not a "computer person"). We need to find ways to upgrade the whole world to the universal character set (of course tools like 8859-15 are necessary for transition, they are useful tools otherwise we can't communicate without loss either between Unicode and older technology within the same language circle -- which is worldwide too, regardless of the language). How much time will the transition last, that is the question? As long as monolingual communications in any language will be the most spread paradigm worldwide, transition will be eternal. Under such conditions, the Polytechnical University where my friend works in Hong Kong and all my correspondents will continue to use their old coding system, precluding real worldwide communications. The biggest mistake was not to start multilingually in the 1960's with computers. Alain LaBonté Québec __ Vous avez un site perso ? 2 millions de francs à gagner sur i(france) ! Webmasters : ZE CONCOURS ! http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/concours.emailif
[langue-fr] L'anglais est-il une langue universelle ?
Is English the best marketing and communication tool? According to the latest figures supplied by GlobalReach (see http://www.glreach.com/globstats/index.php3), during the year 2000, English content of all Internet messages worldwide (web queries and mail) dropped below 50%. It is clear that, as the net goes global, it also goes multilingual. The Internet was born in English but it has become quite obvious that those who attempted to promote it through the use of English only slowed down its development rather than accelerating it. Once again, we are discovering that localization is the key for the international dissemination of any tool, and more especially when that tool is designed to facilitate communication. It is well known that anyone who is serious about pursuing commercial endeavors has to use his customer's language. This policy was especially pushed by firms that sought expansion through the development of international markets. In the old days, the success of firms such as IBM rested mostly on this approach. IBM translated all technical manuals, offered seminars and training in over twenty languages. IBM went as far as translating push button labels on its hardware and even coining new foreign words. That was the case for instance with "ordinateur", which is now the French word for "computer". Let us not forget that IBM often offered computing equipment that was relatively backwards from a technical standpoint with respect to its competitors' and also far more complicated to use. For instance, the Burroughs 5000 computer, which was released in 1960 was far more advanced that any of its IBM counterparts. Yet, Burroughs, with far superior hardware and software racked up 8% of the market at the most when it was the second largest computer manufacturer... The success of Microsoft mostly relied on the same approach. Probably inspired at first by Apple, Microsoft went to great lengths to provide fully localized operating systems and application software. As far back as 1995, Microsoft had already 60% of its market outside English-speaking countries. Again, few people and analysts note that this tremendous success rested less on the quality of Microsoft products than the capability of the company to sell in its customers' tongues. Even though Microsoft has been accused of unfair competition and shady business practices, it has remained for very long the only microcomputer software vendor that seemed to be really concerned about the needs of its international customers to function in their own respective tongues. Many Internet companies have now come to realize the importance of languages other than English. Very early on, Yahoo, for instance, adapted to international markets its search engines and on-line services by systematically translating textual information, redesigning screen and indexing foreign companies registration entries in their corresponding country's national languages only, thereby pushing aside systematically all attempts to make English a de facto "international" language. Five years after its birth, Yahoo is now operating in 24 countries... The use of English on the Internet The Internet is supposed to facilitate international communication, not to preclude it. Yet, it is surprising to find out that many Internet users believe that restricting expression to English only on the net is necessary to bridge our differences and make it possible for us to fully understand one another. Is English really adequate in this context? English is the native tongue to a bare 6% of the world population and, even though it is widely studied, over 70% of the world population has no knowledge of it. If 20% or so of the world population has some knowledge of Englishas a second language, those of us who travel a lot can testify that fluency in English in non-English speaking countries is just wishful thinking. If English may be understood well enough for us to check into a hotel, order a meal or tell a cabby where to take us, it does not often allow us to go much beyond addressing our most immediate needs. True, English has been widely adopted as the international language for science but can those of us who attend international conferences honestly tell us that foreigners can make themselves understood in English as well as we can? Haven't we noticed that - apart from a few exceptions - even highly educated professionals whose mother tongue is not English have a much harder time to address our questions and more especially when their work is being questioned and criticized? Are we blind to the post-conference syndrome that affects most of the participants who speak English as a second language when they congregate and regroup as soon as the plenary session is over to communicate freely in their own native tongues ? In the hard sciences and in technology, when Powerpoint slides and transparencies can compensate for the lack of fluency to present an experimental setup, a pilot plant or a bunch
Re: [langue-fr] L'anglais est-il une langue universelle ?
À 15:26 2000-12-20 -0500, Tex Texin a écrit: Alain, ok, but why is this pertinent to this list and what is it you are asking Unicode to do or stop doing? I answered this at 15:12 but you probably did not see it yet. Alain
Re: [langue-fr] L'anglais est-il une langue universelle ?
À 10:29 2000-12-20 -0800, Rick McGowan a écrit: In any case, I would have been happier had Alain provided an introduction to say why on earth he posted it to the Unicode list. [Alain] Because Unicoders should be happy about it when it speaks about DNS internationalization and the like. Simple. But I should have wondered that it says things in a frustrative way that a lot of people do not want to even hear. Those people should at least be sensitive to the frustration expressed. « Mais il n'y a pas plus sourd que quelqu'un qui ne veut pas entendre. » Alain LaBonté Québec __ Vous avez un site perso ? 2 millions de francs à gagner sur i(france) ! Webmasters : ZE CONCOURS ! http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/concours.emailif
Re: [langue-fr] L'anglais est-il une langue universelle ?
À 13:07 2000-12-20 -0800, Michael \(michka\) Kaplan a écrit: I have not seen a posting from you that would answer Tex's questions. The entire post was inflammatory, and given the fact that you do apparently associate it with your own feelings vis-a-vis French/English in Quebec it even becomes to some degree self-serving. [Alain] You have the right to think so. Everytime somebody posts a document, there is always a message. So to a certain poiut we can say -- even in your case -- that any message sent by somebody is self-serving. [Michael] So, lets try again, shall we? :-) For the record, please count me in as one of those who was offended personally (as discussed earlier by Rick). 1) Why is this pertinent to the Unicode list? [Alain] Reread this (the reason why I sent it to the list): [unknow author] The Chinese, along with many other Asians wonder why some people dare talk about an international Internet as long as the Chinese have to type addresses in Latin characters. So, they have devised their own addressing system that uses ideograms. Some experts think that as long as the Unicode standard does not become universal, there is a distinct risk for various countries to go their own way for domain addresses and other details important enough to give birth to separate networks that will no longer be cross-communication compatible. Therefore, internationalization must permit people to fully localize not only contents but also interfaces. If we had forgotten all about it, the Internet is here to remind us that the only thing that truly deserves to be qualified international can only transcend national borders because everyone would tend to make it his own. [Michael] 2) What is it you are asking Unicode to keep doing or stop doing (which will be clearer once you answer #1). [Alain] I had no intent of asking anything, but since you provoke me, I found something with which I wholeheartedly agree: International forums and discussion groups should welcome contributions in all languages if their participants were really seeking the best and most interesting contributions. [...] If people want the best from the Internet, they have to invite back the best by first realizing that original thoughts automatically entail the use of original modes of expression. I know... You don't want to hear about it. It leads to total chaos. Like the actual world. And Unicode helps the world keeping this chaos (chaos being one possible intepretation, not mine, as I think the opposite: nature diversity is the most divine attribute of the universe and if Babel had not existed we should have invented it, as otherwise we'd better be like molecules of a same, dull gas). Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: Topicality of Postings
À 15:43 2000-12-01 -0800, Sarasvati a écrit: Topicality was moderately disregarded in message UMLSEQ:17099 when Monsieur LaBonte saw fit to regale us with the once-cute "Revocation" that has been making the rounds so much lately over there in the Colonies... 'Leven Digit Boy predictably, compounded the digression (which Monsieur LaBonte should have known better than to start in the first place) by quoting the missive in toto with one off-color comment embedded (in UMLSEQ:17114). Question: Who is this Mr. LaBonte to distort my name like this on a list dedicated to characters of the world? He is not very serious indeed to care about universal characters then... He should know about his roots if he wrote his name like this. (; Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: FW: WIDOWS POLICES ??
À 09:56 2000-10-27 -0800, Alain LaBonté a écrit: À 09:36 2000-10-27 -0800, Magda Danish (Unicode) a écrit: I received this email inquiry in French. I translated it to the best of my knowledge but am not quite sure however what the word "Polices" stands for here. My best guesses are "License" or "Policy" not to mention of course the more obvious "cops" ;-) I'm hoping Alain La Bonte or Patrick Andries will help clarify the correct meaning. [Alain] « Une police [de caractères] » simply means "a [character] font", as odd as it may look. In other contexts, « police » also means « cop » in French. Hard to catch for English-speakers, but true. [Alain] I should add, for the records, that the word « police » in the sense of "cop" in French comes from Greek "politeia", which means "political body" and the word « police » in the sense of "font" comes from ancient provençal "polissia", which means "receipt, bill" (itself from Greek "apodeixis", "proof"). It is the "proof of a character", a "concrete receipt of the character" which you otherwise don't see, like the money you have given up in exchange for a tangible proof... Interesting, isn't it, in particular in the context of character coding? Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: FW: WIDOWS POLICES ??
À 14:51 2000-10-27 -0400, John Cowan a écrit: "Alain LaBonté " wrote: « Une police [de caractères] » simply means "a character font", as odd as it may look. In other contexts, « police » also means « cop » in French. Hard to catch for English-speakers, but true. Doesn't it also have the sense of "[insurance] policy"? I remember a machine-translation joke, something to the effect of the French version of "You may wish to protect your jewelry with a special policy" came out in the English version as "police special" --- which in the U.S. means "the .38 caliber handgun traditionally carried by the police", quite twisting the sense of the sentence! [Alain] Yes, « police d'assurance » is an "insurance policy". Of course... A « proof » that you're insured, as per the etymology I gave earlier. Alain LaBonté Québec
Re: Acronyms (off-topic)
À 07:12 2000-07-11 -0800, Doug Ewell a écrit: Patrick Andries [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, ISO apparently is not an acronym but a reference to the Greek element « isos » (equal) chosen for its language-neutrality. That's at least the official story. Note that many technical magazines or even dictionaries in France believe it to be an English acronym... Many English speakers also think ISO is an abbreviation or initialism (not "acronym"; that term is correct only when the resulting "word" is actually pronounced, like "AIDS" or "SIDA") of the English name "International Standards (or Standardization) Organization." Of course, this is wrong. [Alain] ISO is not pronounced as a word in English but it is in French (pronounce : "eezo" [the rule being in French that an s between two vowels is systematically pronounced z]). That said it is not more an acronym in French either. However there is one (only one whom I found) witness of the formation of ISO, which is the successor of ISA (an English abbreviation in this case without any doubt), who says that nobody ever talked about the Greek word, the day ISO was founded... It maybe that he just was not following the debate, or that the official story (which is indeed very official and the only current thing) was made up a posteriori not to start a linguistc debate. In any way the currrent version is much wiser, and more diplomatic than the other version. I, for one, would have written ISO in uppercase Greek letters (even if Greek is not an official language of ISO, that would have given a better, although not perfect, sign of linguistic opening on the world -- ant that would have affected both the French and English pronunciation [the bad "i" in English and the bad "z" in French]). Alain LaBonté Québec __ message envoye depuis http://www.ifrance.com emails (pop)-sites persos (espace illimite)-agenda-favoris (bookmarks)-forums Ecoutez ce message par tel ! : 08 92 68 92 15 (france uniquement)
