Re: Monetary decimal separators

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Fri Sep 16 2005 - 18:05:49 CDT

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    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk@qaya.org>
    To: "Philippe Verdy" <verdy_p@wanadoo.fr>
    Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:57 AM
    Subject: Re: Monetary decimal separators

    > On 16/09/2005 20:32, Philippe Verdy wrote:
    >
    >> From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk@qaya.org>
    >>
    >>> not in France, and there are different accentuation rules in Canada.
    >>
    >>
    >> Can you comment this last assertion?
    >>
    >> (1) If you speak about the "optional" accents on capitals, you should
    >> know that this is just a technical issue in France with French keyboards
    >> that required *accepting* capitals without accents, so they became
    >> non-mandatory.
    >>
    > This is what I was talking about. I don't know the details. But I
    > understood that accented capitals are mandatory in Canada but optional in
    > France.
    Optional, yes, but still recommanded in France too, each time if possible.

    > This should probably be reflected in locale information for use by
    > spelling checkers etc.

    Yes, but even in France, spell checkers are set up to correct the missing
    accents on capitals, as a good paliative helper for the defective keyboard
    drivers. Such option may be eventually be disabled (in Canada too) if there
    are too many corrections to apply, but this should not be the default in
    either country. In both countries, missing accents on lowercase letters is
    considered an error.

    So there's no such difference hereat the linguistic level. Accents ARE
    needed on capitals in European French, their absence on capitals is a
    linguistic fault, even if its is often considered acceptable on text entered
    with common computers.

    Note: the European French version of Word includes the support for extra
    keystroke sequences, that allows extending the keyboard to enter the missing
    accents on French letters (it also comes with the support of German, Dutch,
    English and Arabic). Not many users of Word know that input feature, but it
    is there, even if there's no extended keyboard driver, and without even
    having to install and use a spell checker. I think that
    OpenOffice/StarOffice should have such support too.

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