Re: LYNX-DEV pardon my french

[DR. JUAN-CARLOS LERMAN]

>On Sun, 17 Nov 1996, David Combs wrote:
>
>> Did you see my suggestion on FRENCH ACCENTS for lynx (via using
>> simple UPPERCASE if the letter had an accent of either of the
>> two types, etc)?
>>
>> Please -- what did you THINK of it?

What I REALLY THOUGHT is that there are THREE FRENCH ACCENTS, plus
some other diacritical marks.

>Since you are asking...
>You show NO signs whatsoever of having tried to find out what Lynx 
>already DOES to show foreign characters in a 7bit environment.
>
>RTFM.

>> If you WANt such a feature,
>> or a DIFFERENT feature for it, you have to SAY something --
>> else will be thought "no one wants it", and that's that.
>
>It is probably a matter of politeness that nobody told you what

French speakers might have not considered you as being conversant
(pun intended, flame not intended) in French since you mentioned 
only two of their accents and you didn't seem to refer at all

 a) to Lynx's capabilities 

 b) to the alphabet and font standards already 
    in use, and others currently being discussed 
    for the international communication of different
    languages and for preserving typographic info 
    on documents transferred over the I'net

 c) two implementations of French accents and other 
    marks to be used in linguistic research on a
    collection of 1800 French e-texts (electronic
    books) dated from the Middle Ages to the XIX
    century:  
              1. Curiouser and curiouser, you would
                 have known that your caps are used
                 as wild cards in the search engine
                 provided at the French site.

              2. If you would have used that system
                 you would have been amazed to see
                 that it's not so obvious the meaning
                 of a word when you replace each 
                 vowel by its corresponding wild-vowel
                 (naturally, this depends on how 
                 extensive is one's vocabulary).

              3. You would also have taken notice of
                 a Unix convention to submit queries
                 with unambiguously accented vowels
                 (this requires, naturally to know
                 the spelling of the specific word
                 *at the point in time* when the word
                 was written or printed).

>they thing about your "suggestion".  Especially on the part of any
>French speaking readers of this list, whose language you propose to
>garble in such an atrocious way.

Please, notice that I'm being too polite by not commenting on your
proposal re the Spanish language.

>Oh, and RTFM.

And RTF URLs!

No, I didn't forget to specify the URL of the site with the 
collection of French books and a fantastic array of programs to
do anything many people had been dreaming about but didn't have
the resources to do it. I din't give the URL because I don't
remember it, but a Web search engine looking for the magic word
ARTFL should take you there.


>   Klaus

    Juan-Carlos
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