Article:		WWDC: Apple Reveals Its Path
Subject:		Exposé
Date:		2003-07-04 07:52:52
From:		dogzilla
Response to: Exposé
if you look at the rendition of this title in the listing after the article, I think you'll understand why the author didn't try to include the acute - it renders as é. Maybe 7-bit ASCII isn't enough for most folks nowadays, but railing against the reality isn't going to do much - it's like complaining about the ubiquity of Windows. Personally, I think accents are useless. I speak English, French, and Spanish, and I see accents as vestigial, useless, and needlessly confusing. I say, let's ditch 7-bit ASCII *and* useless accented characters

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Exposé
  2003-07-07 21:24:00  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  So you are saying si and si (sans the accent mark) are not confusing? And are you trying to say that solo and sólo meant the same thing? I supposed the h in Hacer is irrelevant too.

• Exposé
  2003-07-04 12:03:50  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  That might be, but accents are far from vestigial. They direct the speaker/reader to the proper pronounciation. I, too, speak English, French, and Spanish. In Spanish, imagine the different with an accent over the last "a" in "papa". With an accent, it's a familiar form of "father", without and accent, it's "potato". An important distinction. Also, it's useful for question words, to indicate, in writing, whether a question is being posed: cuándo versus cuando. One implies a question being asked, the other is just "when", to be used whenever you normally would. The same goes for French. Not only are they used for pronounciation, but they are a part of the word.
  
  As far as 7-bit ASCII goes, it's a remnant from the beginnings of digital exchange. Languages that require 8-bits to properly work have come out with a work around, such as VISCII for Vietnamese text encoded in 7 bits. However, UTF-8 is very suitable for encoding, and out to be used. As far as for using it in a webpage, try using the entity é (not sure if that will show up, it ought to read &eacte; ... let's see which displays). But 7-bit ASCII is dead .. move along.
  
  -- Rob