The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
Also they lisped as much as the Spanish back in the day and ff was equated to
'ss'
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrongity-wrong-wrong.
The so-called "long s" may, but need not, have a serif on the left hand side of
the midpoint of the vertical.
The "f" must have a crossbar at the midpoint of the vertical.
They are not, and at the time they were in use were never confused as, identical to each other.
In point of fact, most grade school classrooms (from 3rd grade on) when I was a
child had a frieze displaying the cursive alphabet above the black/chalkboards.
In addition to the variants of "t" and "r", there were two ways to write non-capital "s", the little short squiggle and one that resembled the non-capital "f" except that the loop below the line came up from the left rather than from the right. We were expected to use that in the interiors of words in penmanship practice.
So it wasn't that long ago.
Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> writes:
This thread got me interested enough to look up "Septuagint" on
Wikipedia. The story was that one of the Ptolomies gathered 72 Jewish
scholars in Alexandria to translate the Talmud into Greek for his
library, but apparently this is not true, but however it was done, there
was a Greek translation.
TaNaKh (Torah, chronicles, and prophets), rather than the Talmud.
The myth was that all of the scholars produced the same translation (i.e., a miracle happened).
The Jewish writer David Berg opined that if 70 Jewish scholars did the work, there would be 140 versions...
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 07/12/2025 21:54, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 07/12/2025 19:12, Scott Lurndal wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> writes:
On Sun, 7 Dec 2025 16:31:23 +0100, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Semi-apropos I was reading an essay by Herbert Spencer last night. He >>>>>> questioned the British educational system that taught Greek and Latin >>>>>> because that's what 'educated' people learned even though they had limited
utility in later life.
Latin is useful for several reasons; it helps make sense of english, for starters,
and it certainly helps when subsequently learning latin-derived (Romance) languages.
The point about Latin and Greek is that all science mathematics,
philosophy and the bible used to be written in it because it was that
language of an educated European.
The bible was not written in Latin because that was the language of an
educated European, it was written in Latin because that was the language >>> the clergy (from the lowest monk to the pope) learned and spoke
i.e the language of the educated European...
Well, there was a famous book about early artillery and black powder
when those technologies were somewhat newish in Europe and which contained texts from many sources. The author only bothered to translate the arabic
and chinese sources, because a properly educated officer would of course
be able to read german, english, french, spanish, italian, greek, latin
and english (and I probably forgot one or two languages in the list).
and itBit like the EU today isn't it?
conventiently was a language that most of the people didn't speak, so
they needed the clergy as "interpreters". One of the reasons why the
Church was so much after Martin Luther, because he enabled the common
people (yes, reading was still a limited distribution skill, but reading >>> the native language was far, far more common than understanding Latin)
to read "the word of God" themselves. Rather inconvient for the clergy
trying to remain gatekeepers ...
Not at all. Official EU documents are translated into all the official languages of the EU nations by qualified translators so that the legal
intent remains preserved. One of the reasons why machine translations
between EU languages are so good is that this corpus serves as really
good training material for those systems.
On 2025-12-08 16:35, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bit like the EU today isn't it?
Not at all. Official EU documents are translated into all the official
languages of the EU nations by qualified translators so that the legal
intent remains preserved. One of the reasons why machine translations
between EU languages are so good is that this corpus serves as really
good training material for those systems.
What machine translator are they using?
On 2025-12-08 22:07, Rich Alderson wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
Also they lisped as much as the Spanish back in the day and ff was
equated to
'ss'
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrongity-wrong-wrong.
The so-called "long s" may, but need not, have a serif on the left
hand side of
the midpoint of the vertical.
The "f" must have a crossbar at the midpoint of the vertical.
They are not, and at the time they were in use were never confused as,
identical to each other.
In point of fact, most grade school classrooms (from 3rd grade on)
when I was a
child had a frieze displaying the cursive alphabet above the
black/chalkboards.
In addition to the variants of "t" and "r", there were two ways to write
non-capital "s", the little short squiggle and one that resembled the
non-capital "f" except that the loop below the line came up from the left
rather than from the right. We were expected to use that in the
interiors of
words in penmanship practice.
So it wasn't that long ago.
Interesting.
Bur fortunately for those of us who learned English as a second
language, all that is gone :-)
Otherwise, English would not be that successful as an international
exchange language, methinks.
In comp.os.linux.misc, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
The Douay-Rheims is a translation of the Vulgate. Pius XII suggested a new >> translation from the Hebrew and Greek that resulted in the Jerusalem
Bible, which is the one I have. The first version was in French but that
spurred an English translation. The editors of the New Jerusalem Bible
thought the Jerusalem Bible was more a translation from French than the
original sources and tried again. Then there was the Revised New Jerusalem >> Bible that was supposed to be more literal but had gender inclusive
language.
Will the real bible please stand up?
I think it predates version control. Definitely predates Linux.
It is amazing to me how far off-topic this group gets.
Have you considered taking it to misc.misc?
Elijah--
------
resisting the urge to put something on the Followup-To header line
On 2025-12-09 05:25, Eli the Bearded wrote:
In comp.os.linux.misc, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
The Douay-Rheims is a translation of the Vulgate. Pius XII suggested
a new
translation from the Hebrew and Greek that resulted in the Jerusalem
Bible, which is the one I have. The first version was in French but that >>> spurred an English translation. The editors of the New Jerusalem Bible
thought the Jerusalem Bible was more a translation from French than the
original sources and tried again. Then there was the Revised New
Jerusalem
Bible that was supposed to be more literal but had gender inclusive
language.
Will the real bible please stand up?
I think it predates version control. Definitely predates Linux.
It is amazing to me how far off-topic this group gets.
Have you considered taking it to misc.misc?
I took a look. 80 messages since 2022-07. They stopped on 2023-09 (most
came from google), then one on 2025-04.
Elijah
------
resisting the urge to put something on the Followup-To header line
On 2025-12-08 16:35, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 07/12/2025 21:54, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 07/12/2025 19:12, Scott Lurndal wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> writes:
On Sun, 7 Dec 2025 16:31:23 +0100, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Semi-apropos I was reading an essay by Herbert Spencer last night. He >>>>>>> questioned the British educational system that taught Greek and Latin >>>>>>> because that's what 'educated' people learned even though they had limited
utility in later life.
Latin is useful for several reasons; it helps make sense of english, for starters,
and it certainly helps when subsequently learning latin-derived (Romance) languages.
The point about Latin and Greek is that all science mathematics,
philosophy and the bible used to be written in it because it was that >>>>> language of an educated European.
The bible was not written in Latin because that was the language of an >>>> educated European, it was written in Latin because that was the language >>>> the clergy (from the lowest monk to the pope) learned and spoke
i.e the language of the educated European...
Well, there was a famous book about early artillery and black powder
when those technologies were somewhat newish in Europe and which contained >> texts from many sources. The author only bothered to translate the arabic
and chinese sources, because a properly educated officer would of course
be able to read german, english, french, spanish, italian, greek, latin
and english (and I probably forgot one or two languages in the list).
Wow.
and itBit like the EU today isn't it?
conventiently was a language that most of the people didn't speak, so
they needed the clergy as "interpreters". One of the reasons why the
Church was so much after Martin Luther, because he enabled the common
people (yes, reading was still a limited distribution skill, but reading >>>> the native language was far, far more common than understanding Latin) >>>> to read "the word of God" themselves. Rather inconvient for the clergy >>>> trying to remain gatekeepers ...
Not at all. Official EU documents are translated into all the official
languages of the EU nations by qualified translators so that the legal
intent remains preserved. One of the reasons why machine translations
between EU languages are so good is that this corpus serves as really
good training material for those systems.
What machine translator are they using?
On 10/12/2025 12:54, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-12-08 16:35, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
My sister made a very good living out of translating Spanish, GreekBit like the EU today isn't it?
Not at all. Official EU documents are translated into all the official
languages of the EU nations by qualified translators so that the legal
intent remains preserved. One of the reasons why machine translations
between EU languages are so good is that this corpus serves as really
good training material for those systems.
What machine translator are they using?
English, German, Italian and French documents one to another for IIRC
NATO, but the EU is the same.
As we say 'Costa Packet'
All paid for by the good citizens .
That is why they stripped out nearly all the thngs like œ and æ and ß
We need a new newsgroup - talking.bollocks - for idle chitchat
On Wed, 10 Dec 2025 16:59:54 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
We need a new newsgroup - talking.bollocks - for idle chitchat
The best part of usenet -- no gods and no masters.
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
On Wed, 10 Dec 2025 13:43:03 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
That is why they stripped out nearly all the thngs like œ and æ and ß
Except in history. I was never good at memorizing names but there was a stretch when the kings and queens were all Æthel something or other.
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2025-12-08 16:35, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 07/12/2025 21:54, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 07/12/2025 19:12, Scott Lurndal wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> writes:
On Sun, 7 Dec 2025 16:31:23 +0100, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Semi-apropos I was reading an essay by Herbert Spencer last night. He >>>>>>>> questioned the British educational system that taught Greek and Latin >>>>>>>> because that's what 'educated' people learned even though they had limited
utility in later life.
Latin is useful for several reasons; it helps make sense of english, for starters,
and it certainly helps when subsequently learning latin-derived (Romance) languages.
The point about Latin and Greek is that all science mathematics,
philosophy and the bible used to be written in it because it was that >>>>>> language of an educated European.
The bible was not written in Latin because that was the language of an >>>>> educated European, it was written in Latin because that was the language >>>>> the clergy (from the lowest monk to the pope) learned and spoke
i.e the language of the educated European...
Well, there was a famous book about early artillery and black powder
when those technologies were somewhat newish in Europe and which contained >>> texts from many sources. The author only bothered to translate the arabic >>> and chinese sources, because a properly educated officer would of course >>> be able to read german, english, french, spanish, italian, greek, latin
and english (and I probably forgot one or two languages in the list).
Wow.
You have to keep in mind that said "properly educated officer" at that
time was a noble, usually from a family both financially well off and
well connected (which, back then, needed way more language skills than
today) so they didn't have to engage in such lowly behaviour as working
for living. They also tended to have access to competent tutors providing often 1:1 education from an early age and a certain broadness of language skills was expected to be functional at the various noble/royal courts.
and itBit like the EU today isn't it?
conventiently was a language that most of the people didn't speak, so >>>>> they needed the clergy as "interpreters". One of the reasons why the >>>>> Church was so much after Martin Luther, because he enabled the common >>>>> people (yes, reading was still a limited distribution skill, but reading >>>>> the native language was far, far more common than understanding Latin) >>>>> to read "the word of God" themselves. Rather inconvient for the clergy >>>>> trying to remain gatekeepers ...
Not at all. Official EU documents are translated into all the official
languages of the EU nations by qualified translators so that the legal
intent remains preserved. One of the reasons why machine translations
between EU languages are so good is that this corpus serves as really
good training material for those systems.
What machine translator are they using?
The EU uses human translators, presumably backed by appropriate domain experts (having two legally binding but disagreeing versions of the same document obviously won't do). Various companies then used that (public) document corpus to build/train their machine translators.
Kind regards,--
Alex.
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially
binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27 >different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and >climates.
According to The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>:
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >>> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27
different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and
climates.
I dunno, it worked in China.
On 11/12/2025 20:54, John Levine wrote:
According to The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>:You call that working?
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >>>> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27
different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and
climates.
I dunno, it worked in China.
In 1955, China's GDP per capita was $58. Last year it was over $13,000. That's certainly not all due to the common language but it helped
establish a single economy where people could move to where the jobs
are.
I realize China has plenty of other issues but its economic development
in the past half century is astonishing, particularly in view of how big
it is.
According to The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>:
On 11/12/2025 20:54, John Levine wrote:
According to The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>:You call that working?
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >>>>> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27 >>>> different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and >>>> climates.
I dunno, it worked in China.
In 1955, China's GDP per capita was $58. Last year it was over $13,000. That's certainly not all due to the common language but it helped establish
a single economy where people could move to where the jobs are.
I realize China has plenty of other issues but its economic development
in the past half century is astonishing, particularly in view of how big
it is.
According to The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>:
On 11/12/2025 20:54, John Levine wrote:
According to The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>:You call that working?
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >>>>> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27 >>>> different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and >>>> climates.
I dunno, it worked in China.
In 1955, China's GDP per capita was $58. Last year it was over $13,000. That's certainly not all due to the common language but it helped establish
a single economy where people could move to where the jobs are.
I realize China has plenty of other issues but its economic development
in the past half century is astonishing, particularly in view of how big
it is.
As a genealogist, the abandonment of Latin was the worst thing that
could have happened. We only needed a few words of one language to be
able to interpret old documents from anywhere. Now I have to deal not
only with English, but with German, Polish, Russian, French, etc. Add in
the sloppy versions of various handwriting styles over the centuries and
we have a royal mess.
Lol. I think I tried Heidegger, but followed Wittgenstein's advice "If
on reading a book on philosophy, you have not been tempted to throw it
into the corner without finishing it, you are not a true philosopher"
China has had a common written or drawn language for thousands ofyears
which permitted the existence of the Chinese Empire. The changes since
the Communist aka Red Army take-over have been refinements and some conformity imposed on the spoken language. Most of those refinements
have been to the transliteration into other alphabets such as the Latin alphabet.
Most of the matches you get on these DNA sites are weak and it's
hopeless to find where the human connection is. I was quite pleased to encounter an exception to that.
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially
binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27 different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and climates.
That's certainly not all due to the common language
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27 different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and climates.
Funnily enough, despite all the grumbling, all EU members joined
voluntarily. The EU is build not by conquest, but by individual states applying to join the club. So if a state doesn't like that, they are,
of course, also free to leave. Which is what the UK did. It went amazingly well of them, with the world lining up at their door to sign amazing trade agreements with the UK, lots of money suddenly flowing into the NHS
and in general the UK becoming an economic and political powerhouse
again ... oh wait, that didn't happen, it all went to crap for them, oops.
On Fri, 12 Dec 2025 09:57:42 +0100
Alexander Schreiber <als@usenet.thangorodrim.de> wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:Nah, Greater Prosperity is just around the corner; just talk to Richard Heathfield.
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >> >> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27 >> > different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and >> > climates.
Funnily enough, despite all the grumbling, all EU members joined
voluntarily. The EU is build not by conquest, but by individual states
applying to join the club. So if a state doesn't like that, they are,
of course, also free to leave. Which is what the UK did. It went amazingly >> well of them, with the world lining up at their door to sign amazing trade >> agreements with the UK, lots of money suddenly flowing into the NHS
and in general the UK becoming an economic and political powerhouse
again ... oh wait, that didn't happen, it all went to crap for them, oops. >>
On 2025-12-08, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Lol. I think I tried Heidegger, but followed Wittgenstein's advice "If
on reading a book on philosophy, you have not been tempted to throw it
into the corner without finishing it, you are not a true philosopher"
A quote often attributed to Dorothy Parker is:
"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown
with great force."
It appears she didn't actually say/write that, or at least it cannot be proven, but it is a quote I'm quite fond of regardless of its
provenance.
Niklas
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >>> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27
different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and
climates.
Funnily enough, despite all the grumbling, all EU members joined
voluntarily.
The EU is build not by conquest, but by individual states
applying to join the club. So if a state doesn't like that, they are,
of course, also free to leave.
well of them, with the world lining up at their door to sign amazing trade agreements with the UK, lots of money suddenly flowing into the NHS
and in general the UK becoming an economic and political powerhouse
again ...
oh wait, that didn't happen, it all went to crap for them, oops.
On Fri, 12 Dec 2025 09:57:42 +0100
Alexander Schreiber <als@usenet.thangorodrim.de> wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:Nah, Greater Prosperity is just around the corner; just talk to Richard Heathfield.
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >>>> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27
different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and
climates.
Funnily enough, despite all the grumbling, all EU members joined
voluntarily. The EU is build not by conquest, but by individual states
applying to join the club. So if a state doesn't like that, they are,
of course, also free to leave. Which is what the UK did. It went amazingly >> well of them, with the world lining up at their door to sign amazing trade >> agreements with the UK, lots of money suddenly flowing into the NHS
and in general the UK becoming an economic and political powerhouse
again ... oh wait, that didn't happen, it all went to crap for them, oops. >>
The best part of usenet -- no gods and no masters.
That will change in 4 tears time.
On 12/12/2025 08:57, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >>>> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27
different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and
climates.
Funnily enough, despite all the grumbling, all EU members joined
voluntarily.
The UK did not join voluntarily. Our politicians did it on our behalf
after lying to us about it.
When we were actually given a choice, we left.
Or tried to. Our
politicians are busy trying to reverse all that.
The EU is build not by conquest, but by individual states
applying to join the club. So if a state doesn't like that, they are,
of course, also free to leave.
Not any more.
Which is what the UK did. It went amazingly
well of them, with the world lining up at their door to sign amazing trade >> agreements with the UK, lots of money suddenly flowing into the NHS
and in general the UK becoming an economic and political powerhouse
again ...
Yup. All of that.
oh wait, that didn't happen, it all went to crap for them, oops.
No, it didnt .
Despite every effort by the EU and indeed the British political class,
to make sure it did.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 12/12/2025 08:57, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >>>>> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27 >>>> different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and >>>> climates.
Funnily enough, despite all the grumbling, all EU members joined
voluntarily.
The UK did not join voluntarily. Our politicians did it on our behalf
after lying to us about it.
Please watch the educational documentaries "Yes Minister" and "Yes,
Prime Minister". They include the reasoning why it was critical for
Britain to join the EU.
Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
Its “str” type (immutable) is nominally UTF-32.
No. RTFM. At the Python level, str is a sequence of values that
represent Unicode code points. There is no statement that they are
UTF-32. For all the Python programmer knows it could be packed
21-bit or 3-byte fields, among other possibilities; they would not
be able to tell the difference from Python.
Today UTF-8 is implemented [in Windows] as just another
"non-unicode" multibyte character set ...
Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> wrote:
IBM mainframes and System i use UTF-16.
Doesn't that depend on the OS that is being used there?
The biggest problem I have with any Unicode representation except (I
think) UTF-32 is that a program has no way of knowing how long a
string is without encoding/decoding it.
On Fri, 12 Dec 2025 11:54:38 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
That will change in 4 tears time.
Was that a typo or a subtle statement of the conditions?
On 12/5/25 13:52, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
[snip]
Agreed. I see only one issue clearly limited to UTF-8. In most of the actual >> writing systems the characters are displayed from left to right, others
from right to left and, to my knowledge only old scripts, in
boustrophedon.
I wonder, is there any way to do this now without a lot of work? Are the right-to-left charachers different from the left-to-right?
Of course, the rendering isn't considered by the encoding. It's the
purpose of the font. I choose fonts which doesn't make me think about
the character written. The 0 and O doesn't have to be similar. Like 1
and l and I can be easily differentiated. If it's not the case on your
computer and if that matters, change the font, not the encoding.
I usually spend a lot of time settling on fonts for an editor. Right now
I'm using "IBM Plex Mono", but I've tried a bunch.
Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> wrote at 22:57 this Friday (GMT):
On 12/5/25 13:52, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
[snip]
Agreed. I see only one issue clearly limited to UTF-8. In most of the actual
writing systems the characters are displayed from left to right, others
from right to left and, to my knowledge only old scripts, in
boustrophedon.
I wonder, is there any way to do this now without a lot of work? Are the
right-to-left charachers different from the left-to-right?
Of course, the rendering isn't considered by the encoding. It's the
purpose of the font. I choose fonts which doesn't make me think about
the character written. The 0 and O doesn't have to be similar. Like 1
and l and I can be easily differentiated. If it's not the case on your
computer and if that matters, change the font, not the encoding.
Generally, thats considered an accesibility issue I think.
Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
Richard Kettlewell wrote:
Python takes a different approach. Its internal string
representation dynamically picks 8, 16 or 32 bits depending on the
string contents, with UTF-8 created on demand and cached.
Its “str” type (immutable) is nominally UTF-32.
No. RTFM. At the Python level, str is a sequence of values that
represent Unicode code points. There is no statement that they are
UTF-32. For all the Python programmer knows it could be packed 21-bit or 3-byte fields, among other possibilities; they would not be able to tell
the difference from Python.
Le 01-12-2025, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> a écrit :
No. RTFM. At the Python level, str is a sequence of values that
represent Unicode code points. There is no statement that they are
UTF-32. For all the Python programmer knows it could be packed 21-bit or
3-byte fields, among other possibilities; they would not be able to tell
the difference from Python.
OK, you mostly have another reason why python is a shit programming
language making believe it's easy to use. Thanks, I didn't knew this
one.
I know only two goods arguments in favor of python. The first one is
it's easy to use for a beginner trying simple things. The second one is
there are a lot of libraries helping developers.
Everything else is just a lot of lies. They pretend it's not strongly
typed, but in the real world you will only encounter a lot of issue if
you believe that. For the mixing of indentation and parenthesis, it's
just ugly and awful to use when trying to debug.
Then now you have the encoding issue. Good to know. It's a good learning language to learn programming but not to use in real life. It's designed either for beginners trying to learn how programming works. It looks
good to expert who know every specificities. But in the middle, which
means most of the real world programmers, it's shit.
The best part of usenet -- no gods and no masters.
Oh how the Cabal have fallen.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 12/12/2025 08:57, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 10/12/2025 22:07, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, the alternative would be to declare one language as the officially >>>> binding one and if that is not your language, too bad. Not going to
happen for obvious reasons, though.
The alternative would be to not *impose* 'harmonised' legislation on 27 >>> different countries with different cultures, economies, geographies and >>> climates.
Funnily enough, despite all the grumbling, all EU members joined
voluntarily.
The UK did not join voluntarily. Our politicians did it on our behalf after lying to us about it.
Please watch the educational documentaries "Yes Minister" and "Yes,
Prime Minister". They include the reasoning why it was critical for
Britain to join the EU.
When we were actually given a choice, we left.
That "choice" was served with an impressive helping of lies. And one does
get the strong impression that it was meant merely as a tactical political game and never intended to be executed upon. Then it was. Oops.
Or tried to. Our
politicians are busy trying to reverse all that.
Because even they can see the facts when those are punching them in
the face, yes.
The EU is build not by conquest, but by individual states
applying to join the club. So if a state doesn't like that, they are,
of course, also free to leave.
Not any more.
Still are. Except most are not as fond of shooting their foot as the
UK was.
Which is what the UK did. It went amazingly
well of them, with the world lining up at their door to sign amazing trade >> agreements with the UK, lots of money suddenly flowing into the NHS
and in general the UK becoming an economic and political powerhouse
again ...
Yup. All of that.
Of course. Next, India will come begging to be brought back under the
firm hand of the East India Company.
oh wait, that didn't happen, it all went to crap for them, oops.
No, it didnt .
Despite every effort by the EU and indeed the British political class,
to make sure it did.
CEPR disagrees: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/brexits-slow-burn-hit-uk-economy
Le 05-12-2025, Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> a crit:
On 12/5/25 13:52, Stphane CARPENTIER wrote:
[snip]
Agreed. I see only one issue clearly limited to UTF-8. In most of the actual
writing systems the characters are displayed from left to right, others
from right to left and, to my knowledge only old scripts, in
boustrophedon.
I wonder, is there any way to do this now without a lot of work? Are the right-to-left charachers different from the left-to-right?
I believe that characters form rigth-to-left are different than those
from left-to-right because if it wasn't the case it would be cumbersome
to write by hand. But I see no difficulties. The same way as the same
Arabic letter is written differently if it's in the beginning, in the
end or in the middle of a word. As the same time as you have a character
to tell you it's the end of the line or the end of the file, you have a character to switch the order of the reading. So everything is ready to
use, maybe the old boustrophedon scripts are already encoded, I have no
clue. But I see no issue for taking care of it.
Of course, the rendering isn't considered by the encoding. It's the
purpose of the font. I choose fonts which doesn't make me think about
the character written. The 0 and O doesn't have to be similar. Like 1
and l and I can be easily differentiated. If it's not the case on your
computer and if that matters, change the font, not the encoding.
I usually spend a lot of time settling on fonts for an editor. Right now I'm using "IBM Plex Mono", but I've tried a bunch.
That I can understand. When I was young, I was looking for nice looking fonts. Now, I'm looking for easy to distinguish characters fonts. I'm
stuck with source code pro which is fine for me. But I could switch to another font, I'll would look for 0 O I l 1 to see if I have to discard
it directly or not. When reading plain text English or French it's not
very important, when reading programs, it can be.
Le 01-12-2025, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> a écrit :
Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
Richard Kettlewell wrote:
Python takes a different approach. Its internal string
representation dynamically picks 8, 16 or 32 bits depending on the
string contents, with UTF-8 created on demand and cached.
Its “str” type (immutable) is nominally UTF-32.
No. RTFM. At the Python level, str is a sequence of values that
represent Unicode code points. There is no statement that they are
UTF-32. For all the Python programmer knows it could be packed 21-bit or
3-byte fields, among other possibilities; they would not be able to tell
the difference from Python.
OK, you mostly have another reason why python is a shit programming
language making believe it's easy to use. Thanks, I didn't knew this
one.
Casio calculators use it. Well, MicroPython.
Everything else is just a lot of lies. They pretend it's not strongly
typed, but in the real world you will only encounter a lot of issue if
you believe that.
... there are a lot of libraries helping developers.
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