[sword-devel] French ligatures in Louis SÉGOND’s text

[Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA]

Chris Little <chrislit  crosswire.org> writes:

> We could change oe to oe-ligature where appropriate in Louis Segond. 
> That would be simple enough since editions exist online that use 
> oe-ligature correctly.

	Also, it is not that many words using that… cœur, sœur, mœur…

        Is there anyone to do it already, or should I do it?


> However, since we won't be doing language-specific search tweaks

	That is not what I meant — I mean a general fix, where ligatures at
the search box would find expanded characters, and vice‐versa.  Just like
Google does it, with all kind of European ligatures.

	In the end it is an Unicode question, I guess?


> since oe-ligature basicallly can't be typed on French keyboards

	Yes, but regardless of keyboards us GNU/Linux users who love
typography (admittedly a small subset) have it mapped and used it quite often.

        More seriously, now that computers are more capable there has been a
slow movement back to fine typography, with Unicode, OpenType and even updates
to venerable Τεχ software helping.  And as I see it, it is not a
language-specific issue.  I have no idea of how difficult would be to
implement proper search semantics, so feel free to ignore me, but it would be
nice.


> the change would make these words unsearchable. While the ligature might be
> helpful to non-native speakers needing cues to pronunciation, I don't think
> any native French speakers would have any issues with reading the text
> exactly as it is now.

	Indeed, but it is ugly.  Just as unaccented uppercase in French was
considered acceptable in the typewriter age but now is frowned upon.


> Do you still think the change would be beneficial?

	I do.


> Do any users who use French as their primary language consider the 
> change an improvement?

	Are there enough of us here for a poll?

        I count myself in in the absence of Portuguese texts…

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