This space before the colon and other marks in French should actually be a narrow non-breaking space (U+202F) [0]. There's no key for it in the AZERTY layout. This has been a problem since the typewriter age. People having to get on with their jobs coped with it by using a full, breaking em-space. Unless this gets replaced automatically by the word processor, you get horrid typography and misplaced line breaks all ov…
A modern solution is simply to have non-breaking space easily accessible in your keyboard layout for when you need it. In the BÉPO layout this is at SHIFT + space. Especially simple since all double punctuations (:?!; those that require an nbsp before them) are also accessed with SHIFT.
The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
181–190 of 211 posts
Re: The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you fail to put a space before a colon when writing in French, what happens next? Do people point and laugh? You get disciplined? Or would French speakers accept this as a better way to use the colon character? It looks like this rule is based on old typographic considerations. Much like the Spanish Royal Academy's rule that capitalized letters carry no accents (unlike the opposite French rule that capitalized let…
I don't know, what would happen in English if you didn't capitalize the days of the week? Do people point and laugh? You get disciplined? Or would English speakers accept this as a better way to write the days of the week? No human language on Earth is in a position where it can laughs at others for their idiomatisms.
Re: The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know, what would happen in English if you didn't capitalize the days of the week? Do people point and laugh? You get disciplined? Or would English speakers accept this as a better way to write the days of the week? No human language on Earth is in a position where it can laughs at others for their idiomatisms.
I do not think that was their point (to laugh at other languages), but rather, that there may be contemporary situations in which warrant rethinking the idioms of a language. As an aside, I do not think many people who speak english would even notice a lack of capitalization for the days of the week.
English
Re: The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know, what would happen in English if you didn't capitalize the days of the week? Do people point and laugh? You get disciplined? Or would English speakers accept this as a better way to write the days of the week? No human language on Earth is in a position where it can laughs at others for their idiomatisms.
In English most people wouldn't care. You're going to get in more trouble in French schools for this than in U.S. schools (I don't know about UK schools, or elsewhere in the Anglosphere). My impression is that European culture is a lot more sensitive to these things than U.S. culture.
Re: The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes the French rules old, no-longer-relevant, invalid? Why should we change language to appease lazy software developers?
Not "rules", just this rule. It has to do with typographic considerations that apply to old typesetting technologies that are no longer in use. > Why should we change language to appease lazy software developers? It's been done. For example, in Spanish it is no longer the rule that "ch" and "ll" sort as if they were distinct letters (this change was made in 2010) precisely because that was such a difficult rule to im…
This problem has primarily come about because the Catholic church enforced the latin alphabet on languages where a different alphabet might have been more appropriate. Spanish, although more closely related to Latin, still has a few sounds which there's not a good latin character for. There's no (particular) reason (as far as I'm aware) that 'ch' and 'll' became diagraphs, while ñ acquired an accent.
Why should traditions change just because it's a bit more difficult to do things the 'old way'? why do we still bother with capital letters at the beginning of sentences? or speling things with two leters when one wil do, or riting silent leters wen you cant tell the difrens? & i dont think we need apostrofees n e more.
Re: The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
#186I didn't realize French was written with spaces before colons. It might be time to lose that space, similar to how we don't double space after period. I'm not saying G.Docs or any editor should dictate how French is written, only being pragmatic if I have to choose between (no space): or unwanted emojis ending up in docs.
Re: The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
The French aren’t gonna change their language over an emoji picker. :slightly_smiling_face:
They should abandon out of date typographic rules though. As a French speaker, I want to.
How about getting rid somehow of the letter ù which is used for only one word (où)? Or replacing quatre-vingt by huitante (and same for 70 and 90) like in Switzerland? Or getting rid of œ and æ?
But none of it is realistic. We officially changed from oignon to ognon 32 years ago and people still don't know about it...
Re: The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
As multilingual user constantly switching between 3 languages, that's why I fully committed to the US_intl keyboard layout a while ago and ditched the abomination that is QWERTZ. Took a while to get used to, but overall it has been a very noticeable improvement. One layout to cover all languages, no more constant switching. Edit for clarity: I type "a to get ä and 'a to get à. If I want to type actual quotes followed…
Yes, this. Though I prefer the X11 compose sequence business where you type 'a to get á and so on. X11 compose sequences are a lot more intuitive than the Windows U.S. international keyboard because there's no ambiguities, so, for example, a cedille is just ,c whereas in the Windows U.S. international keyboard layout it's 'c -- X11 for the win here, as the latter is super a) counter-intuitive and b) conflicts with ć…
That sounds pretty good indeed. Any idea how could I go about setting this up under macOS?
> Also, if you program or use a shell, then the Windows U.S. international keyboard layout is just unspeakably unbearable.
I have indeed a couple of little, weird problems when working in the terminal. That's inconvenient but still beats switching between 3 layouts 50 times a day.
Re: The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
As multilingual user constantly switching between 3 languages, that's why I fully committed to the US_intl keyboard layout a while ago and ditched the abomination that is QWERTZ. Took a while to get used to, but overall it has been a very noticeable improvement. One layout to cover all languages, no more constant switching. Edit for clarity: I type "a to get ä and 'a to get à. If I want to type actual quotes followed…
That’s quite memorable. On the Mac I have to press option-u and then a, u, or o to get an ä, ü, or ö. Optionally holding the shift key to get an uppercase vowel with the diacritic. option-` is for grave (è) option-i is for circumflex (é) option-n is for eñe (ñ) option-c is for cédille (ç) When you called QWERTZ an abomination I simply had to upvote your comment.
Re: The plague of emoji insertion in French docs
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
As multilingual user constantly switching between 3 languages, that's why I fully committed to the US_intl keyboard layout a while ago and ditched the abomination that is QWERTZ. Took a while to get used to, but overall it has been a very noticeable improvement. One layout to cover all languages, no more constant switching. Edit for clarity: I type "a to get ä and 'a to get à. If I want to type actual quotes followed…
Yup, did the same. And the layout I happen to work with also has a third layer (menu button) that includes äöüß--that was a glorious discovery.