User talk:Typhlosion

Welcome

Hello, welcome to Wiktionary, and thank you for your contributions so far.

If you are unfamiliar with wiki-editing, take a look at Help:How to edit a page. It is a concise list of technical guidelines to the wiki format we use here: how to, for example, make text boldfaced or create hyperlinks. Feel free to practice in the sandbox. If you would like a slower introduction we have a short tutorial.

These links may help you familiarize yourself with Wiktionary:

• Entry layout (EL) is a detailed policy on Wiktionary's page formatting; all entries must conform to it. The easiest way to start off is to copy the contents of an existing same-language entry, and then adapt it to fit the entry you are creating.
• Check out Language considerations to find out more about how to edit for a particular language.
• Our Criteria for Inclusion (CFI) defines exactly which words can be added to Wiktionary; the most important part is that Wiktionary only accepts words that have been in somewhat widespread use over the course of at least a year, and citations that demonstrate usage can be asked for when there is doubt.
• If you already have some experience with editing our sister project Wikipedia, then you may find our guide for Wikipedia users useful.
• If you have any questions, bring them to Wiktionary:Information desk or ask me on my talk page.
• Whenever commenting on any discussion page, please sign your posts with four tildes (~~~~) which automatically produces your username and timestamp.
• You are encouraged to add a BabelBox to your userpage to indicate your self-assessed knowledge of languages.

Enjoy your stay at Wiktionary! --Vahag 06:03, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Old Italic languages

Hi. Thanks for your contributions of ancient Italic languages. There is just one minor issue: we record words exactly as they are attested, and not in some preferred scholarly way. If they are attested as having right-to-left directionality, they must be added as such. While we do occasionally make some minor concessions such as in case of redundant glyphs (where we standardize on a preferred choice, and add others as alternative spellings) or spacing (which we introduce for convenience), this is really too important language characteristic to ignore. --Ivan Štambuk 16:56, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, but Ivan, regardless of directionality, the recorded order of the letters must be from the beginning of the word to the end (as e.g. Arabic is coded). Turning the letters around to only simulate RTL is in my view unacceptable. Typhlosion has apparently been correcting this. Since the RTL directionality is not fixed in Unicode would need to use a RTL command on the headword in the article to do this; still, if the directionality varies in inscriptions, I would welcome a standardization of such a trivial matter, since, if unstandardized, it may cause some confusion for readers over the correct letter order. In any case, we should preferably cite the original source(s) in their own directionality, noting it beside the citations. Not to worry, though, Typhlosion, citations can be added later. In the meantime, welcome to the project! – Krun 09:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

What is unacceptable is that these words are now displayed as having LTR directionality when in fact they have RTL in actually written texts. There are some Old Italic (and Etruscan) inscriptions/texts having LTR directionality, but RTL prevails. They should be thus standardized on the dominant directionality - RTL, and the other should be added as an alternative spelling. The default Unicode directionality of LTR in this case is a result of appealing to scholarly tradition of the last 1-2 centuries, i.e. bending the reality to suit their fallacious & ignorant norms. IMHO the direct approach is superior than adding the directionality override marker to every single word. Unicode standards abound in colossal blunders and this comes as no surprise. --Ivan Štambuk 15:23, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

However, Unicode convention is to encode all characters (with the exception of 15 characters with the Logical_Order_Exception property) in logical order rather than visual order. Attempting to spell these words in visual order is simply a kludge. The side effects are easily apparent: in categories, the words are organized by the last letter rather than the first, and any font that uses LTR versions of the letters presents a word that's meaningless in either direction. Yes, I am well aware that Umbrian and Oscan use RTL directionality, but encoding the letters in visual order and calling it a day is not the solution. What should be done, if you believe that the Unicode Consortium is so deeply in error on this, is to submit a proposal to them to change the directionality of the Old Italic letters from Left_to_Right (L) to either Right_to_Left (R) or Other_Neutral (ON). The Bidi_Class property is not set in stone. This is a Unicode problem, not a Wiktionary problem, and Wiktionary should not be the place to "fix" it. —Typhlosion 18:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)