Re: language specifics

[Tobias Burnus <burnus@gmx.de>]

Hi all,

> > The main problem is in the weird ones. I have no problem with the "e
> > and alike ones, but using them for compound words and quotes is a bad
> > idea, since context has dedicated alternatives for those, which also
> > have options. To what extend do we need to satisfy habits and features
> > from for instance latex?
The use of "a, "s etc is very important not only because of backward
compatiblity, but also
a) the \ss doesn't bring you a "s = \SS = ß
b) thinks like "ck only get be used when they are simple to type in.

> It is a sensible argument that many of the abbreviations I've been
> discussing to you in the last few days may be kind of complicated crap,
> let alone of no use to a lot of languages.
Well the complication and number of languages shouldn't be the problem,
but I don't see the necessarity for "` "' (I recently tried them on a lecture
evaluation form (LaTeX powered) and got instancely the wrong ones ("...,,), so I
prefer \quote and \quotation.

> The german package for that instance has evolved for the last twelve
> years, so that I expect the basics to having been settled. On the other
I don't need them, but I think you can add them to cont-sys.tex as your personal
setup. (maybe also a using \writestring{DON'T FORGET ME TO ADD, WHEN DISTIBUTING
THIS TEX FILE})

> Thus, if context has even more powerful tools that can cope in all
> necessary cases, maybe this is the time to consider turning to a more
> reasonable source encoding. In this case, my questions are:

> a) Do we still have to account for 7-bit ascii?
YES! Using our local computer network (physics department), all DEC computers
don't have umlauts on their keybord (the FreeBSD ones, have but they usually
don't work). Using accented letters on Telnet connections does sometimes, but
not always work, etc.

Regards,

Tobias