non-breaking hyphens??

[Barbara de Zoete]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Op Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:56:17 +0100, schreef Toby Inkster
<usenet200410@t obyinkster.co.u k>:
[color=blue]
> Harlan Messinger wrote:
>[color=green]
>> The rationale for using a different convention is irrelevant to this
>> discussion. We're talking about the alleged intransigence inherent in
>> the very fact of doing things differently from everybody else.[/color]
>
> Though as I pointed out the UK is not "doing things differently from
> everybody else" when it comes to driving on the left. It's doing things
> the same as plenty of other contries, including Ireland, Japan, India,
> Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, most of sub-Saharan Africa, most of
> South-East Asia and parts of South America.[/color]

Except for Japan, remind me of the (former) terratory of the British
Colonies, if you please. As far as I can see, you just gave a pretty
accurate descrition of the former British Empire.
So no surprise people driving on the left hand side of the road. It once
was just the British Empire "doing things differently from everybode
else". :-)



--
Barbara

PretLetters <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/>
Webontwerp <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html >
Zweefvliegen <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html>

[George Lund]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

In message <Xns957CF1B3CB6 BCjkorpelacstut fi@193.229.0.31 >, Jukka K.
Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> writes[color=blue]
>Thank _you_ for saying that, even though you don't explicitly mention
>that it's the "US English" with its odd notational conventions (like
>using a period as a decimal separator!) that confuses us.[/color]

Now hang on! If we're going to drift OT anyway I feel at liberty to
point out that in Britain we've been using decimal points rather than
commas since at least John Napier in the 1619. So there are many
millions of Europeans that are confused by the comma, if you want to
think of it that way.

And anyway, if we don't like the standards we change 'em :-)[color=blue]
>SI used only a comma as the separator for decimal fractions until 1997.
>The number "twenty four and fifty one hundredths" would be written as
>"24,51". In 1997 the CIPM decided that the British full stop (the "dot
>on the line", or period) would be the decimal separator in text whose
>main language is English ("24.51"); the comma remains the decimal
>separator in all other languages.[/color]
[according to that wondrously dubious source that is Wikipedia]

--
George Lund

[Andy Dingley]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:52:49 +0100, Toby Inkster
<usenet200410@t obyinkster.co.u k> wrote:
[color=blue]
>It ain't in transitional either.[/color]

Ha ! Sheer force of habit - I assumed we were talking about target
yet again !


Did <nobr> or (or I guess <NOBR>) ever make it into any W3 DTD
proposals, or was it only ever Netscape ?

[Malcolm Dew-Jones]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Harlan Messinger (hmessinger.rem ovethis@comcast .net) wrote:
: Dr John Stockton <spam@merlyn.de mon.co.uk> wrote:

: >IMHO, <phone> is not the right word; or not always the right word for
: >the desired effect.
: >
: >In XML, it is indeed useful to be able to specify telephone numbers,
: >with sub-classes such as land-line or mobile, speech or fax, etc.; but
: >ISTM that in HTML, where the balance of actual concern for presentation
: >and for meaning is different, there should first be an element for
: >properly treating numbers in general (including +5 -2.345 1.234E-5
: >1,234,567.89 1.234.567,89 and space-containing numbers) - and that
: ><phone> would only be justified if telephone-specific behaviour was
: >needed, which IMHO is probably not the case.

: A phone number isn't really a number, though. It's a code that happens
: to consist, by an arbitrary convention, entirely of digits. Numbers
: convey a quantity, a value, magnitude. Telephone numbers don't.

Agreed.

Further more, in general a telephone number is actually an instruction on
how to tell the phone to make contact.

The "number" to reach a specific phone may require meta information. An
extension is a simple example. The extension number is required to
complete the connection to the remote telephone, but the numbers cannot be
entered as part of the initial set of numbers to start the call.

Technologies such as old mobile phones or party lines (all still used in
some parts of the world) can have additional requirements which are
included as part of the telephone "number" if you are trying to place a
call to them.

[Toby Inkster]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Barbara de Zoete wrote:[color=blue]
> Op Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:56:17 +0100, schreef Toby Inkster
> <usenet200410@t obyinkster.co.u k>:
>[color=green]
>> Though as I pointed out the UK is not "doing things differently from
>> everybody else" when it comes to driving on the left. It's doing things
>> the same as plenty of other contries, including Ireland, Japan, India,
>> Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, most of sub-Saharan Africa, most of
>> South-East Asia and parts of South America.[/color]
>
> Except for Japan, remind me of the (former) terratory of the British
> Colonies, if you please. As far as I can see, you just gave a pretty
> accurate descrition of the former British Empire.[/color]

Well, Macau has never been under British rule -- it was Portugese until
1999 and is now a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic
of China. Then drive on the left there. The US Virgin Islands were a
Dutch territory, which was then sold to the US. They drive on the left
there. Most of Indonesia has never been under British rule (one or two
provinces were briefly). They drive on the left there.

Converesly, Canada and the USA have been under British rule. Gibraltar is
*currently* under British rule. They all drive on the right.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Barbara de Zoete]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Op Mon, 11 Oct 2004 20:56:34 +0100, schreef Toby Inkster
<usenet200410@t obyinkster.co.u k>:
[color=blue]
> Barbara de Zoete wrote:[color=green]
>> Op Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:56:17 +0100, schreef Toby Inkster
>> <usenet200410@t obyinkster.co.u k>:
>>[color=darkred]
>>> Though as I pointed out the UK is not "doing things differently from
>>> everybody else" when it comes to driving on the left. It's doing things
>>> the same as plenty of other contries, including Ireland, Japan, India,
>>> Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, most of sub-Saharan Africa, most of
>>> South-East Asia and parts of South America.[/color]
>>
>> Except for Japan, remind me of the (former) terratory of the British
>> Colonies, if you please. As far as I can see, you just gave a pretty
>> accurate descrition of the former British Empire.[/color]
>
> Well, Macau has never been under British rule -- it was Portugese until
> 1999 and is now a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic
> of China. Then drive on the left there. The US Virgin Islands were a
> Dutch territory, which was then sold to the US. They drive on the left
> there. Most of Indonesia has never been under British rule (one or two
> provinces were briefly). They drive on the left there.
>
> Converesly, Canada and the USA have been under British rule. Gibraltar is
> *currently* under British rule. They all drive on the right.[/color]

So with the exception of a few milion people, still a bilion or so are
part of the former empire. I still see some patern arising from that.

--
Barbara

PretLetters <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/>
Webontwerp <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html >
Zweefvliegen <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html>

[Toby Inkster]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Andy Dingley wrote:
[color=blue]
> Did <nobr> or (or I guess <NOBR>) ever make it into any W3 DTD
> proposals, or was it only ever Netscape ?[/color]

It's supported by many UAs (not just Netscape), but never part of any W3C
recommendation.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Toby Inkster]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Barbara de Zoete wrote:
[color=blue]
> So with the exception of a few milion people, still a bilion or so are
> part of the former empire. I still see some patern arising from that.[/color]

Japan and Indonesia together have a population of 360 Million -- six times
the population of the UK.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Dr John Stockton]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

JRS: In article <1aclm0p90jeq0g vk61n1jtq8g4qfa 6kncl@4ax.com>, dated
Mon, 11 Oct 2004 12:20:27, seen in news:comp.infos ystems.www.authoring.h
tml, Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.rem ovethis@comcast .net> posted :[color=blue]
>[color=green]
>>Now you'll tell me that,
>>although so firmly wedded to the Imperial system of measurement (in
>>spite of 1776), Americans do not use or understand the stone of 14
>>pounds avoirdupois.[/color]
>
>Allow me to enlighten you: Americans by and large do *not* know that
>Brits have a unit of weight called the stone, that it is the usual
>primary unit used to measure the weight of a person, and that it is
>equal to 14 pounds. In fact, when "Queer Eye - UK Edition", as it's
>titled here, is broadcast, explanatory text appears in subtitles when
>Britishisms are used that are largely unknown here. When someone
>mentions having lost 2 stone 7, a subtitle explains that this is 35
>pounds.[/color]

Just as I predicted. The British are not entirely ignorant of the
depths of American ignorance - which extend to not knowing how much the
British know about what the Americans do not know.
[color=blue]
>FYI our liquid measures are not equal to the like-named Imperial
>measures.[/color]

An inaccurate statement. Some are correct, the acre-foot for example,
but others, such as the gallon, are the wrong size.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon. co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Proper <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line exactly "-- " (SonOfRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SonOfRFC1036)

[Dr John Stockton]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

JRS: In article <i2clm0lqg6upqs 668cp8osc8e1qtu kc1p6@4ax.com>, dated
Mon, 11 Oct 2004 12:12:57, seen in news:comp.infos ystems.www.authoring.h
tml, Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.rem ovethis@comcast .net> posted :[color=blue]
>Dr John Stockton <spam@merlyn.de mon.co.uk> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>IMHO, <phone> is not the right word; or not always the right word for
>>the desired effect.
>>
>>In XML, it is indeed useful to be able to specify telephone numbers,
>>with sub-classes such as land-line or mobile, speech or fax, etc.; but
>>ISTM that in HTML, where the balance of actual concern for presentation
>>and for meaning is different, there should first be an element for
>>properly treating numbers in general (including +5 -2.345 1.234E-5
>>1,234,567.8 9 1.234.567,89 and space-containing numbers) - and that
>><phone> would only be justified if telephone-specific behaviour was
>>needed, which IMHO is probably not the case.[/color]
>
>A phone number isn't really a number, though. It's a code that happens
>to consist, by an arbitrary convention, entirely of digits. Numbers
>convey a quantity, a value, magnitude. Telephone numbers don't.[/color]

That's of no great significance for HTML. What truly matters is how
they should be formatted. In a medium designed to be human-readable,
they should never be entirely digits; there should at least be spaces
present. Numbers in the local book are given as "(020) #### ####"; and
that is the form in which they should appear on a Web page, if
international access is not a consideration - not "020####### #".

Unless one has <USphone>, <UKphone>, <FRphone>, ..., <ISphone>, ...,
ISTM that the only generally valid formatting is to convert each
whitespace between characters to a single non-breaking space - which may
well be what <nobr> does - and that the same treatment is useful in
other cases, not just telephone or other numbers.

Then <phone> may be justified as doing exactly the same (hence cheap to
provide), but carrying an implication of meaning.

Care is needed : is exactly "020 #### ####" a telephone number, or is it
not? It is diallable, but it will not cause a telephone to ring
(AFAIK). Is "WHI ####", where each # represents a particular digit, a
telephone number? It used to be perhaps the best-known one in the
country, after 0 & 999.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ???@merlyn.demo n.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.

Food expiry ambiguities: <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/date2k-3.htm#Food>

[Jan Roland Eriksson]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 23:02:40 +0100, George Lund <george@lund.co .uk>
wrote:
[...][color=blue]
>...If we're going to drift OT anyway I feel at liberty to
>point out that in Britain we've been using decimal points
>rather than commas since at least John Napier in the 1619.[/color]

Sure; and you are at some instances driving on the wrong side of the
road too; even as seen from your own standards.

<http://www.humorsajten .com/ar/bilder/rondell.htm>

Sorry for that page being in Swedish as it comes to the language but
what it says in the last couple of lines is...

"English people are crazy, no wonder that God placed them
on an island of their own" :-)

--
Rex

[Jan Roland Eriksson]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 12:20:27 -0400, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.rem ovethis@comcast .net> wrote:
[...][color=blue]
>Allow me to enlighten you: Americans by and large do *not* know that
>Brits have a unit of weight called the stone, that it is the usual
>primary unit used to measure the weight of a person, and that it is
>equal to 14 pounds.[/color]

You may be right on that, but I do recall a televised report from a
match between "Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay)" and an opponent that I do
not recall. The showdown was on american soil for sure and I will never
forget that the TV reporter did announce the weight of the combattants
in stones :-)

--
Rex

[Stan Brown]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

"Malcolm Dew-Jones" <yf110@vtn1.vic toria.tc.ca> wrote in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:[color=blue]
>The "number" to reach a specific phone may require meta information. An
>extension is a simple example. The extension number is required to
>complete the connection to the remote telephone, but the numbers cannot be
>entered as part of the initial set of numbers to start the call.[/color]

Sure they can, if the instruction set includes a "wait N seconds"
command, as it does for e.g. most modems.

Flippancy aside, I'm not sure why you call an extension meta
information. It seems to me to be part of the phone number.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA

http://OakRoadSystems.com/

HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Dr John Stockton <spam@merlyn.de mon.co.uk> wrote:
[color=blue]
>JRS: In article <i2clm0lqg6upqs 668cp8osc8e1qtu kc1p6@4ax.com>, dated
>Mon, 11 Oct 2004 12:12:57, seen in news:comp.infos ystems.www.authoring.h
>tml, Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.rem ovethis@comcast .net> posted :[color=green]
>>Dr John Stockton <spam@merlyn.de mon.co.uk> wrote:
>>[color=darkred]
>>>IMHO, <phone> is not the right word; or not always the right word for
>>>the desired effect.
>>>
>>>In XML, it is indeed useful to be able to specify telephone numbers,
>>>with sub-classes such as land-line or mobile, speech or fax, etc.; but
>>>ISTM that in HTML, where the balance of actual concern for presentation
>>>and for meaning is different, there should first be an element for
>>>properly treating numbers in general (including +5 -2.345 1.234E-5
>>>1,234,567. 89 1.234.567,89 and space-containing numbers) - and that
>>><phone> would only be justified if telephone-specific behaviour was
>>>needed, which IMHO is probably not the case.[/color]
>>
>>A phone number isn't really a number, though. It's a code that happens
>>to consist, by an arbitrary convention, entirely of digits. Numbers
>>convey a quantity, a value, magnitude. Telephone numbers don't.[/color]
>
>That's of no great significance for HTML. What truly matters is how
>they should be formatted.[/color]

Semantics are exactly what's significant for HTML. Therefore, to mark
something up as a number that isn't a number would be incorrect.


--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Stan Brown <the_stan_brown @fastmail.fm> wrote:
[color=blue]
>"Malcolm Dew-Jones" <yf110@vtn1.vic toria.tc.ca> wrote in
>comp.infosyste ms.www.authoring.html:[color=green]
>>The "number" to reach a specific phone may require meta information. An
>>extension is a simple example. The extension number is required to
>>complete the connection to the remote telephone, but the numbers cannot be
>>entered as part of the initial set of numbers to start the call.[/color]
>
>Sure they can, if the instruction set includes a "wait N seconds"
>command, as it does for e.g. most modems.
>
>Flippancy aside, I'm not sure why you call an extension meta
>information. It seems to me to be part of the phone number.[/color]

There a couple of ways of looking at the question of whether the phone
number plus the extension together are *a* phone number. If you enter
the user name "hellothere " to log onto your computer, and "letmein" to
enter a chat room, is it correct to say that "hellothereletm ein" is
your user name for purposes of getting to the chat room?

--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.