Re: [boost] MSVC doesn't like some high-ASCII characters on non-USsystems

From: Joaquín Mª López Muñoz (joaquin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-04 06:04:20

Paul Giaccone ha escrito:

> Nigel Stewart wrote:
>
> >>I also think that since Boost supply generic libraries and not specific
> >>GUI, there is no reason for Boost code to go beyond plain low ASCII
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Here is the result of using a Python script to grep for non-ascii
> >lines in the boost headers.  (Boost 1.33.0)
> >
> >The issues mostly revolve around copyright symbols and
> >European names.  (How inconvenient for developers to have
> >non-ASCII names! :-)
> >
> >
> >
> Here are a few thoughts:
>
> * German ë, ö and ü can be replaced by ae, oe and ue respectively - this
> is standard practice in German.
> * é could be replaced by e' (e apostrophe) but this is not very
> satisfactory, and only really works at the end of a word. Such a
> substitution is permissible for replacing accents at the end of Italian
> words.
> * Replace each accented letter with its nearest unaccented equivalent: é
> -> e, ä -> a, Å -> A, ç -> c, æ -> ae, ñ -> n, ø -> o, ð -> dh, etc.
> This might not be acceptable to the authors, however, because it could
> end up changing the meaning (and, very likely, the pronunciation) of
> their names. However I'm sure each language must have equivalents (such
> as oe for German ö, etc) when accented characters are not available. The
> Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic might be helpful here.

A few remarks about Spanish: The most common offending characters in this
language are:

á é í ó ú ñ

and the corresponding uppercase versions, plus

¿ ¡

(there are other, much less frequent non-ASCII characters, like ü)

When these are unavailable for whatever reason (one's using a foreign
keyboard or typewriter, for instance), the usual substitution rules are:

á --> a
é --> e
í --> i
ó --> o
ú --> u
¿ ¡ are just omitted

Removal of the vowel diacritics result in a change of the stressed syllable,
but we Spaniards don't usually frown at that (or even notice): after all,
very rarely will this change collide with a different existing word. I've never
seen in Spanish the Italian custom of adjoining a ' character as a substitute
for the accent.
Removal of inverted exclamation and question marks is also widely accepted,
and even regularly practised in informal writing.
This leaves us with ñ I've seen the following substitutions:

ñ --> n
ñ --> nn
ñ --> gn
ñ --> ny

the most usual ones being the first and second: I couldn't say which is the winner

between these two.

Joaquín M López Muñoz
Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo