Re: Suggestion to add "spacing between sentences" to CSS3 Line WD

>>>Ok well you write the algorithm that you propose we include in the CSS
>>>spec, preferably compatible with the majority of CSS' users' languages
>> 
>> End of sentence character.
>
>Do you mean that one would use style like
>
>p {
>	sentence-spacing: 1.5em;
>	sentence-end-of-character: ".";
>}
>
>or something slightly more sophisticated? Note that my example falls 
>down even with something as simple as "Pi is about 3.1415." -- notice 
>both periods.


No I think we were referring to a new EOS character, e.g. &eos;

In my last response, I stated that I think sentence parsers are better way
to go.  And that I bet parsers exist, even I don't have time to research them.


>> It is the most popular on the web by far.  In fact, I saw a statistic
>> recently on CNN how English is advancing at a ravishing pace.  It is
>
>URL to the said statistic? There's an expression: lie, whopper, 
>statistic. It might be that majority of web pages (publicly accessible 
>files) are written in English. But if that isn't what they did say, I 
>would like to know how they know that majority of the users are reading 
>those pages. There's, for example, the great firewall of China so 
>there're pretty many people that cannot access, for example, CNN web pages.


I apologize I did not bookmark it.  But a Google search will probably find
it, if you have time.  And yes I think it was publicly viewable web pages.

I also have seen a documentary (on Learning or Discovery Channel) stating
that the adoption of English as main 2nd language is increasing in the
world, due to the business implicitions.  Language evolution is far
outpacing genetic and other evolutions.  And the documentary (which
featured expert researchers in the field) stated that the web was
accelerating this phenomenon at an *exponential* rate not ever seen in
history before, because most public documents are first published in English.

The romantic side of me wishes this were not reality.  The pragmatic side
of me says that it is reality and we better accept it.  The fact is that
English is the single most important language to support from the authoring
side.

I agree with you that from the reader's perspective, every language is
important.  But in terms of making decisions about priorities, one can live
in a romantic perspective or a realistic one.  In the business world, we
have no choice but to live in the realistic one.  I live in my romantic
world when I go on vacation or go to the mountain.

I bet Spanish has the best chance of challenging English in terms of
economic importance.  The shift is already well advanced in southern USA.
I already have to press 2 to escape from Spanish greetings on phone
automation.  I am bombarded with Spanish advertising, etc..  So I have an
idea what it feels like to have my native language not be the priority.
Guess what?  I am learning Spanish :-)


>IMO, much harder and more important issue for non-English web pages is 
>hyphenation. My mother tongue, Finnish, can contain words like 
>"lentotapaturmavakuutusautomaatti" which makes default rendering 
>(especially word wrapping) pretty ugly in often used user agents. The 
>only (that I know of) available fix for the issue is to use ­ inside 
>words but not all user agents support that correctly.

And how many small fixes needed for how many languages in this world?  The
answer is probably in the 1000s.  Which to do first?

For me, it is do the one that earns me the most $ first.  That is English.
Next is probably German or French.  Then probably Spanish.  Finnish:


mysql> select count(*) from sale where Price>0 and right(email,2)='fi';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|       27 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.31 sec)

mysql> select count(*) from sale where Price>0 and right(email,2)='de';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|      253 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.27 sec)

mysql> select count(*) from sale where Price>0 and right(email,2)='fr';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|      155 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.27 sec)

mysql> select count(*) from sale where Price>0 and right(email,2)='nl';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|      289 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.27 sec)

mysql> select count(*) from sale where Price>0 and right(email,2)='uk';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|      771 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.27 sec)

mysql> select count(*) from sale where Price>0;
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|    17416 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.10 sec)

-Shelby Moore

Received on Tuesday, 17 December 2002 12:46:34 UTC