Re[2]: [css4-text] 'text-autospace' and French guillemets

> Alexander Savenkov wrote to <mailto:www-style@w3.org> on 9 August 2004
> in "Re[2]: [css4-text] 'text-autospace' and French guillemets" 
> (<mid:1217070296.20040809143008@xmlhack.ru>):

>> For every paragraph sign, for every mathematical sign, for every
>> metrical abbreviation, for many-many others. The characters that seem
>> obscure to you are correctly referred to as legal Unicode characters.

> Being legal Unicode characters does not necessarily raise them out of
> obscurity. By my reckoning, Unicode contains dozens if not hundreds of
> obscure characters. A thorough repertoire is, after all, the very job
> of the Unicode Standard.

> I'll grant that the thin space is familiar (not obscure) to readers of
> French. But a formatting code like word joiner? I strongly suspect that
> it is unknown to an overwhelming majority of literate people.

Agreed. Nevertheless the overwhelming majority shouldn’t be marking up
texts, and thus they don’t even need to know what is behind the
visible form. On the contrary, if the target audience of the text is
known to possess the up-to-date software, authors who are familiar
with typesetting may offer better user experience.

(Gosh, that sounds like some awful marketing material, sorry.)

...

>> <sentence>certainly, when one avoids the use of non-ASCII characters
>> and
>> instead marks everything up, all the issues are gone</sentence>
>>
>> sentence::first-letter { text-transform: uppercase; }
>> sentence::after { content: "."; }

> I've considered these scenarios. And, at the risk of appearing a 
> super-geek, I admit that they appeal to me.

I knew it! ;-)

> But I don't wish to follow
> this theme here and now. I think that another forum, and perhaps 
> another time, would be better for discussion of these matters.

I invite you to take part in the discussion of XHTML 2.0 on www-html.

...

> I'm not sending you, specifically. I do not speak, read, or write
> French, so I am incapable. I was hoping that somebody would volunteer
> to make contact. If you wanted to do so, that would be great. But I was
> betting on Daniel Glazman. He didn't contact the French Academy, but in
> a recent message (<mid:41173EE7.8040503@easyconnect.fr>) corrected my
> leaning to the French Academy and indicated that he was on the problem.
> I have therefore accomplished what I desired.

Thanks to Daniel.

...

Regards,
Alexander
-- 
  Alexander Savenkov                            http://www.xmlhack.ru/
  savenkov@xmlhack.ru             http://www.xmlhack.ru/authors/croll/

Received on Tuesday, 10 August 2004 10:09:44 UTC