On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 10:37 AM Max Mahlke <max.mah...@rwth-aachen.de> wrote: > > Dear all, > > in runtime/doc/digraph.txt, the greek letter lambda is spelt LAMDA. I > was looking for it under the accepted spelling LAMBDA, though I am aware > that some people prefer the LAMDA spelling. I see that the vim source > makes frequent use of both spellings. > > I would therefore suggest changing > > runtime/doc/digraph.txt > 550:Λ L* 039B 0923 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA > 581:λ l* 03BB 0955 GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA > > to > > runtime/doc/digraph.txt > 550:Λ L* 039B 0923 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA/LAMBDA > 581:λ l* 03BB 0955 GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA/LAMBDA > > I would gladly submit a PR for this change on GitHub. > > Apologies if this has been discussed before, I have not found any > mention in the mailing list archives or on the GitHub repository. > > Kind regards > Max Mahlke
tl·dr : See last paragraph but one, below. When I was in secondary school, in the Latin-Greek section of a school where instruction was given in French, I learnt to call this letter "lambda". However the official, unchangeable names as shown in the "Greek and Coptic" Unicode reference file http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0370.pdf are GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA and GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA respectively. The small letter, but not the capital, has under its official name there the commentary "= lambda". The names in all-caps used in Vim, and in particular by the optional Unicode plugin by Christian Brabandt, but also at lines 179sqq of the standard digraph.txt helpfile, are the official names published by the Unicode Consortium. We shouldn't change them at will, even though I too would use the name "lambda" with b for the Greek letter Λλ and even though the English Wiktionary entry for "lamda" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lamda gives as definition "Misspelling of *lambda*" with a Usage note: "This spelling appears in the Unicode standard (U+0039B, U+003BB)." So it appears that the use of the word LAMDA in those names is a misspelling which was taken up in an official standard which cannot ever be modified (because the rules of the Unicode standard include never modifying the official name of a codepoint once it has been defined, not even to correct an error). A deplorable fact, to be sure, but I think that we have to live with that misspelled all-caps unchangeable official name. All hope is not lost, however. One thing we _could_ do, if Bram agrees, is define help tags *Lambda* and *lambda* right where these "official misspellings" are found in the digraph.txt helpfile. Then ":help Lambda" and ":help lambda" would bring us to the appropriate digraphs. Another thing which any Vim user should do who, like me, frequently uses Greek letters absent from his/her keyboard, is commit to memory the fact that digraphs for Greek letters are characterized by a Latin letter followed by an asterisk: so ^K a * gives the letter alpha, ^K b * gives the letter beta, ^K L * gives upper-case lambda, etc., with the particularity that ^K s * is a "normal" sigma while the "final" sigma is ^K * s. In addition, typing :dig! in Normal mode displays the list of digraphs with section headers. You'll find the Greek alphabet as part of the "Greek and Coptic" section. Best regards, Tony. -- -- You received this message from the "vim_dev" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vim_dev" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to vim_dev+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vim_dev/CAJkCKXvMejktyYxPK4v0kvJZ9CrSMPcnNz0M6ToK5L9BVMuFng%40mail.gmail.com.
