From: Antoine Leca (Antoine10646@leca-marti.org)
Date: Thu Jul 15 2004 - 04:35:54 CDT
On Wednesday, July 14th, 2004 20:12,
Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin va escriure:
>> Correct. Some people however would like to change that (i.e. so
>> that the dots are no longer optional).
>
> Not unlike the situation of French (and other) accent on capitals:
> Originally a technical constrain crudely solved to serve the tool
> instead of the user.
I do not hear proposals to *require* accentuating capitals in French (at
least in Europe), though. It is left to the domain of "good style
practices."
And by the way: the technical limitation also meant economy at many levels
(less leading so more lines on the same space, less breakage of lead forms,
less keys on typewriters keyboards, possibility to access the often used
accentuated letters with single key so ease of typing, possibility to use a
7 bit character code compatible with existing phone lines), all things in
favour of the "user" when he is a writer; and which are derived in terms of
(less) cost in favour of the reader, too.
Antoine
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