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The Queen’s stylesheets

spiffingcss.com

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Re: The Queen’s stylesheets

#41

Post by chad_oliver »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #33
greggman wrote: post #27

I guess we also need ones for other languages 透明度: 0.5; 色: 紫; which does bring up the point, are we being at all culturally insensitive by making nearly all web standards English? Or how about UsingCamelCase? Give than some languages don't have the concept of UPPER/lower case. Does Go require you to use "er" for interfaces as in Writer, Reader, Serializer? That seems even worse given that it not just roman letters on…

The thing about English use is, well, at least it is consistent. Everything uses American English, so if you need to learn to program, there is only one language to learn. Allowing other languages wouldn't solve much since English would still be present in all the API methods and so on, so I think consistency is better.

"Everything uses American English"? Yeah, no. There's plenty of technical stuff on the web that uses British English.

Re: The Queen’s stylesheets

#45

Post by mathieuh »

keithpeter wrote: post #39
dsrguru wrote: post #16

While the linguist in me is appalled by the author's joking (hopefully!) prescriptivist notion that British English is equivalent to such a thing as "correct English" (the American in me is also perturbed by such a claim), I'd like to point out that the home page's phrase "amount of features" is considered by such prescriptivists to be incorrect English. :) They would insist on "number of features" :P

A brief note to the Author of the Page in question " ...one must check whether one has PHP 5.2 (or newer) installed upon their Internet server... " Should this not be 'one's Internet server'? " Something our primitive stateside friends can understand " What is this 'stateside' you speak of, Sir? Our Colonial Cousins may also resent the adjective that has been applied. I personally rather regret the automatic recitati…

Prescriptivists would say it should be "one [..] upon his", but the author may wish to avoid using gender specific pronouns and is thus using the singular "their" instead.

Re: The Queen’s stylesheets

#46

Post by josephg »

suyash wrote: post #25
eksith wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. They also forgot 'quite' => 'text-transform' ;)

Whose fault is it is British folks aren't the majority in W3C or even none of the British companies manufacture browser who implement the CSS specs. Hence, words are spelled like they are in America.

It has nothing to do with how the W3C is stacked. Us Australians and Brits use American spelling ('color', etc) when programming for consistency. We would rather our APIs are spelled incorrectly (setColor()) than inconsistently (sometimes setColor() and sometimes setColour()).

Re: The Queen’s stylesheets

#47

Post by josephg »

chad_oliver wrote: post #41
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about English use is, well, at least it is consistent. Everything uses American English, so if you need to learn to program, there is only one language to learn. Allowing other languages wouldn't solve much since English would still be present in all the API methods and so on, so I think consistency is better.

"Everything uses American English"? Yeah, no. There's plenty of technical stuff on the web that uses British English.

There's very little code on the internet that uses British English. I'm Australian, and even when I write software that will only be used by other Australians, I still use American English so I don't have to think about it.

Spelling in documentation is much less important.

Re: The Queen’s stylesheets

#48

Post by oakesm9 »

chad_oliver wrote: post #41
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about English use is, well, at least it is consistent. Everything uses American English, so if you need to learn to program, there is only one language to learn. Allowing other languages wouldn't solve much since English would still be present in all the API methods and so on, so I think consistency is better.

"Everything uses American English"? Yeah, no. There's plenty of technical stuff on the web that uses British English.

Do you have any examples to share? All the languages I've used have been american english, which is a sensible decision.

Re: The Queen’s stylesheets

#49

Post by corin_ »

keithpeter wrote: post #39
dsrguru wrote: post #16

While the linguist in me is appalled by the author's joking (hopefully!) prescriptivist notion that British English is equivalent to such a thing as "correct English" (the American in me is also perturbed by such a claim), I'd like to point out that the home page's phrase "amount of features" is considered by such prescriptivists to be incorrect English. :) They would insist on "number of features" :P

A brief note to the Author of the Page in question " ...one must check whether one has PHP 5.2 (or newer) installed upon their Internet server... " Should this not be 'one's Internet server'? " Something our primitive stateside friends can understand " What is this 'stateside' you speak of, Sir? Our Colonial Cousins may also resent the adjective that has been applied. I personally rather regret the automatic recitati…

> I personally rather regret the automatic recitation of Arne's ditty when visiting the page.

Possibly the first time I have appreciated auto-play music on a site, made me laugh. And now it's put me into a baroque mood which is always a good thing.

Re: The Queen’s stylesheets

#50

Post by keithpeter »

mathieuh wrote: post #45
keithpeter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A brief note to the Author of the Page in question " ...one must check whether one has PHP 5.2 (or newer) installed upon their Internet server... " Should this not be 'one's Internet server'? " Something our primitive stateside friends can understand " What is this 'stateside' you speak of, Sir? Our Colonial Cousins may also resent the adjective that has been applied. I personally rather regret the automatic recitati…

Prescriptivists would say it should be "one [..] upon his", but the author may wish to avoid using gender specific pronouns and is thus using the singular "their" instead.

I accept both points. I was reflecting on usage I have seen in late Victorian/Edwardian sources. That seemed to fit with the style of the text (although not the visual presentation of the page).

PS: 'Spiffing' is later and the Jeeves references in the HTML markup point to 1920s. Biggles. Biplanes.

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