* [TUHS] Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms @ 2023-06-16 2:18 Douglas McIlroy 2023-06-16 3:20 ` G. Branden Robinson 0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Douglas McIlroy @ 2023-06-16 2:18 UTC (permalink / raw) To: TUHS main list I am not convinced that using special characters rather than in-line eqn is a good thing. It means learning a whole new vocabulary. Quick, what's the special character for Greek psi? I have found that, for a sequence of displayed equations as in an algebraic derivation, a pile often looks more coherent than a sequence of EQ-EN pairs. The pile can even contain interleaved comments, as in Hoare-style proofs. Doug ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms 2023-06-16 2:18 [TUHS] Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms Douglas McIlroy @ 2023-06-16 3:20 ` G. Branden Robinson [not found] ` <37ea7f2b-e8f7-3cfe-a27d-ece47c5dc0f7@esi.com.au> 0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: G. Branden Robinson @ 2023-06-16 3:20 UTC (permalink / raw) To: groff; +Cc: TUHS main list [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1346 bytes --] [looping groff list back in] At 2023-06-15T22:18:08-0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote: > I am not convinced that using special characters rather than in-line > eqn is a good thing. It means learning a whole new vocabulary. Quick, > what's the special character for Greek psi? \[*q] ! But I may suffer from an excessive familiarity with this material. (Checking myself, I got it right! Part of my mnemonic is that there are 24 letters to map from our Latin alphabet to Greek, drop 'j' and 'v' as "Late Latin" variants of 'i' and 'u'[1], and then most of the rest map intuitively with a handful of exceptions that have to be memorized, psi being one of them.) > I have found that, for a sequence of displayed equations as in an > algebraic derivation, a pile often looks more coherent than a sequence > of EQ-EN pairs. The pile can even contain interleaved comments, as in > Hoare-style proofs. Yes. I suspect there is a widely held misconception that eqn distinguishes displayed equations from inline ones. It doesn't--a macro package might, but even then, nothing internal to the equation's typography is different. I guess this is a hangover from TeX? You need one rule: use "smallover" instead of "over" if you're trying to pack a fraction into running text. Regards, Branden [1] Which isn't _quite_ correct but works for this purpose. [-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
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* [TUHS] Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms [not found] ` <37ea7f2b-e8f7-3cfe-a27d-ece47c5dc0f7@esi.com.au> @ 2023-06-16 5:07 ` G. Branden Robinson 2023-06-16 7:43 ` [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) markus schnalke 0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: G. Branden Robinson @ 2023-06-16 5:07 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Damian McGuckin; +Cc: groff, TUHS main list [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1403 bytes --] At 2023-06-16T14:22:22+1000, Damian McGuckin wrote: > On Thu, 15 Jun 2023, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > But I may suffer from an excessive familiarity with this material. > > Yes. Me too. Maybe that is a sad comment on the both of us. That is the price of trying to leave things better than one found them. > Why do Greeks have an alternate way of writing sigma! We English-speakers used to have an alternative way of writing it, if you regard the Latin alphabet's "S" as cognate (so to speak) with the Greek sigma (and I think doing so is defensible). It's even in Unicode with a low code point, U+017F. For inſtance, the United States uſed to employ a non-final lowercaſe S in the founding documents of its preſent government, where you can see exhibits of the "Congreſs of the United States". It can take the modern reader a "long S" time to not read that "s" as an "f". And if you think that's difficult enough, check out, IIRC, the Arabic and Devanagari scripts where you can have different initial, medial, and final forms for letters. Follow-ups ſhould probably be confined to groff@; I'll ſtop now leſt we get ſent to the COFF liſt for groſs tranſgreſſions of topicality. (Although if anyone wants to tell me whether non-final s was applied to the trailing ends of non-final morphemes _within_ words, I'm all ears.) Regards, Branden [-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) 2023-06-16 5:07 ` G. Branden Robinson @ 2023-06-16 7:43 ` markus schnalke 2023-06-16 9:39 ` Wesley Parish 2023-06-16 16:18 ` Paul Winalski 0 siblings, 2 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: markus schnalke @ 2023-06-16 7:43 UTC (permalink / raw) To: groff, TUHS main list Hoi. [2023-06-16 07:07] "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> > > For inſtance, the United States uſed to employ a non-final lowercaſe S > in the founding documents of its preſent government, where you can see > exhibits of the "Congreſs of the United States". In old German, up to WWII, namely in Fraktur (the printed letters) and Sütterlin (the handwritten letters) both kinds of S are present. Today, the long-S has only survived in some old company and restaurant names, many of them changing by and by to the end-S, because younger Germans can't read long-S and don't understand it anymore. Newer names don't use it the long-S, even if they are written in Fraktur letters, which would demand for the long-S. For example the beer brand Warsteiner changed the long-S in 2013 to the end-S. https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Warsteiner-Logo-history.png > (Although if anyone wants to tell me whether non-final s was applied to > the trailing ends of non-final morphemes _within_ words, I'm all ears.) I'm no language expert, so I don't really know what morphemes are. What I do know is that the round-S (i.e. end-S) is applied to the end of words, parts of compound words (typical for German), and in some situatuations even to parts of words. -- But only in Fraktur and Sütterlin, not in modern German (latin alphabet), which does no longer have a long-S. Examples: End of word: Haus (engl: house) Middle of word: Kiſte (engl: box) Compound word: Hausmaus (engl: house mouse) Hauſmaus would be wrong. In such cases the end-S is in the middle of the word. Such compounds are typical for German. If you have an english word like ``downhill'', where two separate words joined into one, the end-S of the first part would still remain an end-S, although it moved into the middle of the word. (Sorry, I cannot find an english example where the first word part ends with s.) There's a famous example for the difference the distinguishing between s and ſ can make: Wachſtube, i.e. Wach-Stube (engl: guardhouse) Wachstube, i.e. Wachs-Tube (engl: wax tube) In modern German context is necessary to know which meaning of Wachstube is the right one, in old German it's clear from the writing. Besides compounds German is also infamous for it's prefixes. If you combine the prefix ``aus'' (engl: out) with other words, the end-S remains as well: ausgezeichnet (engl: excellent -- wordly: out-marked) Ausfahrt (engl: exit for vehicles -- wordly: out-drive) Using the long-S in these situation would be wrong. That means: Whenever one uses a word, that can stand alone (and is thus well-known for it's shape), as part of a larger word, the part stays the same, even within other words, keeping its end-S. Generally I'd say, but take this only as a rule of thumb, because I'm not enough expert in this: You use an end-S in all situation where you would want to avoid a ligature of the s with the next letter. Long-S can have ligatures with the following letter and there are common ones in German. (In Wachſtube an st-ligature would be preferred.) End-S will never have ligatures with the following letter. This at least is the situation concerning old German, as understood by someone with curiousity for the topic but without real lingual knowledge. meillo ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) 2023-06-16 7:43 ` [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) markus schnalke @ 2023-06-16 9:39 ` Wesley Parish 2023-06-16 16:18 ` Paul Winalski 1 sibling, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Wesley Parish @ 2023-06-16 9:39 UTC (permalink / raw) To: markus schnalke, TUHS main list I ſaw Mommy kiſſing ſanta Klaus, underneath the miſtletoe laſt night ... re: compound words in English ending is "s" - bossman, bossmonkey, etc. Though in the case of "Godzone", a somewhat tongue-in-cheek name for New Zealand derived from "God's Own", a tribute to New Zealand's natural wonders, the "s" has been replaced by "z" ... Yes, it's an interesting feature of European alphabet development. Wesley Parish On 16/06/23 19:43, markus schnalke wrote: > Hoi. > > [2023-06-16 07:07] "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> >> For inſtance, the United States uſed to employ a non-final lowercaſe S >> in the founding documents of its preſent government, where you can see >> exhibits of the "Congreſs of the United States". > In old German, up to WWII, namely in Fraktur (the printed letters) > and Sütterlin (the handwritten letters) both kinds of S are > present. > > Today, the long-S has only survived in some old company and > restaurant names, many of them changing by and by to the end-S, > because younger Germans can't read long-S and don't understand it > anymore. Newer names don't use it the long-S, even if they are > written in Fraktur letters, which would demand for the long-S. > > For example the beer brand Warsteiner changed the long-S in 2013 to > the end-S. > https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Warsteiner-Logo-history.png > > >> (Although if anyone wants to tell me whether non-final s was applied to >> the trailing ends of non-final morphemes _within_ words, I'm all ears.) > I'm no language expert, so I don't really know what morphemes are. > What I do know is that the round-S (i.e. end-S) is applied to the > end of words, parts of compound words (typical for German), and in > some situatuations even to parts of words. -- But only in Fraktur > and Sütterlin, not in modern German (latin alphabet), which does > no longer have a long-S. > > Examples: > > End of word: Haus (engl: house) > Middle of word: Kiſte (engl: box) > > Compound word: Hausmaus (engl: house mouse) > Hauſmaus would be wrong. > > In such cases the end-S is in the middle of the word. Such > compounds are typical for German. If you have an english word > like ``downhill'', where two separate words joined into one, > the end-S of the first part would still remain an end-S, > although it moved into the middle of the word. (Sorry, I > cannot find an english example where the first word part ends > with s.) > > There's a famous example for the difference the distinguishing > between s and ſ can make: > > Wachſtube, i.e. Wach-Stube (engl: guardhouse) > Wachstube, i.e. Wachs-Tube (engl: wax tube) > > In modern German context is necessary to know which meaning > of Wachstube is the right one, in old German it's clear from the > writing. > > Besides compounds German is also infamous for it's prefixes. If > you combine the prefix ``aus'' (engl: out) with other words, the > end-S remains as well: > > ausgezeichnet (engl: excellent -- wordly: out-marked) > Ausfahrt (engl: exit for vehicles -- wordly: out-drive) > > Using the long-S in these situation would be wrong. > > That means: Whenever one uses a word, that can stand alone (and is > thus well-known for it's shape), as part of a larger word, the part > stays the same, even within other words, keeping its end-S. > > > Generally I'd say, but take this only as a rule of thumb, because > I'm not enough expert in this: You use an end-S in all situation > where you would want to avoid a ligature of the s with the next > letter. Long-S can have ligatures with the following letter and > there are common ones in German. (In Wachſtube an st-ligature > would be preferred.) End-S will never have ligatures with the > following letter. > > > This at least is the situation concerning old German, as > understood by someone with curiousity for the topic but without > real lingual knowledge. > > > meillo ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) 2023-06-16 7:43 ` [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) markus schnalke 2023-06-16 9:39 ` Wesley Parish @ 2023-06-16 16:18 ` Paul Winalski 2023-06-16 17:46 ` John Cowan [not found] ` <1da83cf3-7fac-b5fd-dec-e4b4313d3a@esi.com.au> 1 sibling, 2 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Paul Winalski @ 2023-06-16 16:18 UTC (permalink / raw) To: markus schnalke; +Cc: groff, TUHS main list On 6/16/23, markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote: > > [2023-06-16 07:07] "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> >> >> For inſtance, the United States uſed to employ a non-final lowercaſe S >> in the founding documents of its preſent government, where you can see >> exhibits of the "Congreſs of the United States". > > In old German, up to WWII, namely in Fraktur (the printed letters) > and Sütterlin (the handwritten letters) both kinds of S are > present. > > Today, the long-S has only survived in some old company and > restaurant names, many of them changing by and by to the end-S, > because younger Germans can't read long-S and don't understand it > anymore. German also has a ligature letter called eszet that is a fusion of a long s (the one that resembles the English letter f) and a short s. It is used when a 's' sound is immediately preceded by a long vowel or a diphthong and not followed by a consonant. When the glyph for eszet isn't available 'ss' is substituted, as in the word 'strasse' (street). -Paul W. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) 2023-06-16 16:18 ` Paul Winalski @ 2023-06-16 17:46 ` John Cowan 2023-06-16 17:51 ` Steve Nickolas [not found] ` <1da83cf3-7fac-b5fd-dec-e4b4313d3a@esi.com.au> 1 sibling, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: John Cowan @ 2023-06-16 17:46 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Paul Winalski; +Cc: groff, TUHS main list [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 628 bytes --] On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 12:18 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote: > German also has a ligature letter called eszet that is a fusion of a > long s (the one that resembles the English letter f) and a short s. > Not a short s, but a z, as the name indicates: es-zett, S-Z. This reflects the use of z in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant sound distinct from s, derived from /t/ by the High German sound shift but distinct from original /s/. When the distinction was lost in the 13C, z came to be used for its modern sound /ts/, but the ligature came to represent the merged /s/. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1160 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) 2023-06-16 17:46 ` John Cowan @ 2023-06-16 17:51 ` Steve Nickolas 2023-06-16 18:19 ` Angelo Papenhoff 0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Steve Nickolas @ 2023-06-16 17:51 UTC (permalink / raw) To: John Cowan; +Cc: groff, TUHS main list [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 833 bytes --] On Fri, 16 Jun 2023, John Cowan wrote: > On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 12:18 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> > wrote: > > >> German also has a ligature letter called eszet that is a fusion of a >> long s (the one that resembles the English letter f) and a short s. >> > > Not a short s, but a z, as the name indicates: es-zett, S-Z. This > reflects the use of z in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant > sound distinct from s, derived from /t/ by the High German sound shift but > distinct from original /s/. When the distinction was lost in the 13C, z > came to be used for its modern sound /ts/, but the ligature came to > represent the merged /s/. I've seen ß used in some copies of the Geneva Bible with exactly the modern German sense, as a ligature of long s and normal s. -uso. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) 2023-06-16 17:51 ` Steve Nickolas @ 2023-06-16 18:19 ` Angelo Papenhoff 0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Angelo Papenhoff @ 2023-06-16 18:19 UTC (permalink / raw) To: TUHS main list On 16/06/23, Steve Nickolas wrote: > I've seen ß used in some copies of the Geneva Bible with exactly the > modern German sense, as a ligature of long s and normal s. There are two origins of this character. One ſs and one ſʒ. You can see it here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Sz_modern.svg 1 and 2 are ſs, 3 and 4 are ſʒ Now it gets even more off-topic (sorry): My personal favourite (and the one I've adopted in my handwriting) is the one used in Berlin street signs, obviously ſʒ: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Strasse-FF-Cst-Berlin.png Interestingly I've noticed the Bonn street signs look rather similar, maybe it's a thing capitals do. aap ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
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* [TUHS] Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms [not found] ` <1da83cf3-7fac-b5fd-dec-e4b4313d3a@esi.com.au> @ 2023-06-16 19:38 ` G. Branden Robinson 0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: G. Branden Robinson @ 2023-06-16 19:38 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Damian McGuckin; +Cc: groff, TUHS main list [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1953 bytes --] At 2023-06-17T05:19:46+1000, Damian McGuckin wrote: > Getting back to groff, that final/terminating sigma, is it still > pronounced as sigma. > > It certainly has no EQN equivalent name and its groff short symbol > name is > > \(ts > > (terminal sigma) which is not like other greek letters. Just > wondering whether it needs a sentence to mention its abscence from > EQN. There are a few others, but they postdate Ossanna troff. From groff_char(7) in 1.23.0.rc4: ϵ \[+e] u03F5 variant epsilon (lunate) ϑ \[+h] u03D1 variant theta (cursive form) ϖ \[+p] u03D6 variant pi (similar to omega) φ \[+f] u03C6 variant phi (curly shape) ς \[ts] u03C2 terminal lowercase sigma + I know of no reason to make these generally available by default in eqn, though, any more than they already are. You can type their special characters in eqn input and assign spacing and style types to them. (This typing system is a GNU eqn feature, not present in AT&T eqn). In fact I have a coupled pair of reforms in mind for GNU eqn: unfastening the definitions of the lowercase Greek special characters from the typeface used for letters (variables), and then defining the lowercase Greek letter eqn macro names ("alpha", "beta", ...) to explicitly use the "letter" style type. https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?64232 https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?64231 (For example: define alpha ! type "letter" \(*a ! ) This should result in no change for historical documents (except on terminals, where it will fix a bug), and give us some flexibility for users of modern fonts where Greek letters are properly supported in text fonts (i.e., in four styles). The Graphic Systems C/A/T had uppercase Greek available _only_ upright and lowercase Greek _only_ italic. Modern typesetting systems are not so limited. Regards, Branden [-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2023-06-16 19:39 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 10+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2023-06-16 2:18 [TUHS] Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms Douglas McIlroy 2023-06-16 3:20 ` G. Branden Robinson [not found] ` <37ea7f2b-e8f7-3cfe-a27d-ece47c5dc0f7@esi.com.au> 2023-06-16 5:07 ` G. Branden Robinson 2023-06-16 7:43 ` [TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms) markus schnalke 2023-06-16 9:39 ` Wesley Parish 2023-06-16 16:18 ` Paul Winalski 2023-06-16 17:46 ` John Cowan 2023-06-16 17:51 ` Steve Nickolas 2023-06-16 18:19 ` Angelo Papenhoff [not found] ` <1da83cf3-7fac-b5fd-dec-e4b4313d3a@esi.com.au> 2023-06-16 19:38 ` [TUHS] Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms G. Branden Robinson
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