Re: Define French as a separate input language (issue 288290043 by address@hidden)

[Valentin Villenave]

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 12:32 AM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
> Seriously?  I mean, no German would think about leaving off umlauts from
> a letter under any circumstance

Well, in German it can alter the meaning (or at least distinguish
between plural and singular). In French it’s a bit rarer. (Although
when speaking out loud, nobody would say "Frankais" instead of
"Français", which is what you get when you remove the cédille.)

That being said, I still very much do take issue with the German
reform that tends to replace "ich muß" with "ich muss" :-)

> So one can forget "ç" in French?  Wow.  How did that come about?

Well, I’m dealing with very computer-illiterate people: retired people
who didn’t use a computer at work, younger people whose only dealings
with written French come from hasty SMS texting... And even ordinary
people who can’t be bothered typing correctly, knowing that MS Word
hopefully will replace their mistyped words with correct ones anyway.
(sigh)

That being said, forgetting the cédille in "francais" does remain an
extreme case. I’m not sure "espanol" happens more often, however.

> confusing that we don't accept "English" as notename language

Indeed. That’s (alongside with "francais" or "espanol") the sort of
reasons why I was seduced by the idea of maintaining a few aliases,
like we’re already doing for "espanol". We *could* even accept the
english language names, such as "french", "german" etc. (since
\language is already an English word, as are most LilyPond non-musical
keywords).

> reducing the number of gratuitous deviations.

In that regard, you’ve got my vote.

Cheers,
Valentin.