non-breaking hyphens??

"Andreas Prilop" <nh******@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.44.0410081807210.3256-100000@s5b004...

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Frances Del Rio wrote:
is there a non-breaking hyphen in HTML??

‑ <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/dashes.html>
1-800-444-5454... (and is not broken into two lines if phone no. occurs
near end of a line..)

Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.

Probably not. On a web page for a flower shop in Davenport, Iowa, a phone
number should be written in the format commonly used by ordinary people in
Davenport, Iowa, not in a manner adopted by international commercial
concerns in Europe. Likewise, dates on a web-based calendar of events for a
church in Walla Walla are going to appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April
13, 2004, at 4:30 pm". "2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.

Jul 23 '05 #3

"Harlan Messinger" <h.*********@comcast.net> wrote:

Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.
Probably not.

Surely not, since the standard format has no hyphens.

Oh yeah, I know you tried to refute the _first_ sentence.
On a web page for a flower shop in Davenport, Iowa, a
phone number should be written in the format commonly used by
ordinary people in Davenport, Iowa, not in a manner adopted by
international commercial concerns in Europe.
Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?

The fact is that when nonstandard punctuation is used in phone numbers,
_different_ systems of punctuation are used, and the numbers become
understandable only if you look at the digits only and ignore _all_
punctuation. So you might just as well use standard punctuation, with
spaces (or no-break spaces when desired), which is the least confusing-
Likewise, dates on a
web-based calendar of events for a church in Walla Walla are going to
appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April 13, 2004, at 4:30 pm".
"2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.

What about all the potential visitorslike tourists and immigrants who get
very confused with American notations like 03/04/05 and have to guess
which number means which component of a date? (In the worst case, they
think they know well what it means.)

Date issues are different from phone number notations, since real
misunderstandings are possible with dates. The first thing to note is
that by writing the year in four digits makes virtuallu sure that the
reader gets at least the year right. :-)

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

Jul 23 '05 #4

Arne

Once upon a time *Harlan Messinger* wrote:

"Andreas Prilop" <nh******@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.44.0410081807210.3256-100000@s5b004...
On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Frances Del Rio wrote:
> is there a non-breaking hyphen in HTML??

‑ <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/dashes.html>
> 1-800-444-5454... (and is not broken into two lines if phone no. occurs
> near end of a line..)

Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.

Probably not. On a web page for a flower shop in Davenport, Iowa, a phone
number should be written in the format commonly used by ordinary people in
Davenport, Iowa, not in a manner adopted by international commercial
concerns in Europe. Likewise, dates on a web-based calendar of events for a
church in Walla Walla are going to appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April
13, 2004, at 4:30 pm". "2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.

I have understand that common accepted international standards is not
accepted in U.S. :-)

2004-04-13 16:30 is very easy to understand, e.g each day (date) have 24
hours. And its not a big problem if the line braks between the date and
the time, as they are separated.

All "real" browsers don't even break the date. But we know the problem
here is IE, as with many other things.

--
/Arne

Jul 23 '05 #5

jmm-list-gn

Frances Del Rio wrote:

is there a non-breaking hyphen in HTML?? for example, so a phone no.
falls all on one line.. as in..

1-800-444-5454... (and is not broken into two lines if phone no. occurs
near end of a line..)

A general approach is:
css: .nobr { white-space: nowrap; }
html: 1-800-444-5454

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Jul 23 '05 #6

Sam Hughes

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tut.fi> wrote in
news:Xn*****************************@193.229.0.31:

Date issues are different from phone number notations, since real
misunderstandings are possible with dates. The first thing to note is
that by writing the year in four digits makes virtuallu sure that the
reader gets at least the year right. :-)

Why use sensible date notation when you could just dodge around the problem
with good scheduling? When your convention starts on 5/5/5, everybody
wins!

Jul 23 '05 #7

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tut.fi> wrote in message
news:Xn*****************************@193.229.0.31. ..

"Harlan Messinger" <h.*********@comcast.net> wrote:
Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.
Probably not.

Surely not, since the standard format has no hyphens.

Oh yeah, I know you tried to refute the _first_ sentence.
On a web page for a flower shop in Davenport, Iowa, a
phone number should be written in the format commonly used by
ordinary people in Davenport, Iowa, not in a manner adopted by
international commercial concerns in Europe.

Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?

Quite possibly. But it will *certainly* confuse some, who will say, "What
the heck does +19458293829 mean?" and may not recognize it as a phone
number. Remember, you're talking from the perspective of someone who already
knows the standard format.

Anyway that's not the main point. I believe you're inflating the scope and
role of standards committees. It's not up to an international committee to
dictate local practices or to coerce people into giving up their familiar
conventions in local affairs. I'd think you'd agree, unless you're an
Englishist or an Esperantist who'd like the ISO to compel his compatriots to
switch to English or Esperanto and stop using Finnish altogether. :-)

The fact is that when nonstandard punctuation is used in phone numbers,
_different_ systems of punctuation are used, and the numbers become
understandable only if you look at the digits only and ignore _all_
punctuation. So you might just as well use standard punctuation,
It's not a question of "might as well". It's not a question of making a
choice between the traditional convention and the standard, it's a question
of most people not even knowing about the convention.
with
spaces (or no-break spaces when desired), which is the least confusing-
Likewise, dates on a
web-based calendar of events for a church in Walla Walla are going to
appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April 13, 2004, at 4:30 pm".
"2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.
What about all the potential visitorslike tourists and immigrants who get
very confused with American notations like 03/04/05 and have to guess
which number means which component of a date? (In the worst case, they
think they know well what it means.)

Many of them also get confused because we Americans have the annoying habit
of writing things in English instead of the tourists' language. (Most other
countries are the same way!) That's the way it goes when you travel: you
encounter things that are unfamiliar. If you go to Egypt, you'll usually see
numbers written in Arabic numerals; if you go to China, they'll often be
written in Chinese numerals.

I wouldn't have any argument against a movement at the national level to
introduce and switch to the standard format. After all, I've been wishing
for 30 years that we'd get around to switching to the metric system. But
that's not the same thing as advising someone (and by the way, I may not be
talking about the OP here--I'm talking about a generic situation) to switch
unilaterally to a convention unfamiliar to her and to the rest of her
community. There wouldn't be any more benefit to that than to being the only
butcher in the state to sell meat by the gram instead of by the ounce.

Date issues are different from phone number notations, since real
misunderstandings are possible with dates.
Real confusion is possible with phone numbers.
The first thing to note is
that by writing the year in four digits makes virtuallu sure that the
reader gets at least the year right. :-)

Since year 2000, I've tended to write four-digit years too: 3/15/2004. But
in daily use I stick to the local convention for the order of the date's
components.

Jul 23 '05 #8

"Harlan Messinger" <h.*********@comcast.net> wrote:

Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?
Quite possibly. But it will *certainly* confuse some, who will say,
"What the heck does +19458293829 mean?"

That's not standard punctuation.
I believe you're inflating the
scope and role of standards committees. It's not up to an
international committee to dictate local practices or to coerce
people into giving up their familiar conventions in local affairs.
The Web is not local. We are discussing authoring for the World Wide Web
here. And there are no "familiar conventions" for phone numbers even
locally but a confused mess. Since unification is needed anyway, there's
little reason not to do that by the standard.

ObHTML: There's the minor argument too that in HTML, we can easily and
effectively make a space non-breaking in a cross-browser way. The very
existence of this thread indicates this this is not the case for
hyphens.
Many of them also get confused because we Americans have the annoying
habit of writing things in English instead of the tourists' language.

Thank _you_ for saying that, even though you don't explicitly mention
that it's the "US English" with its odd notational conventions (like
using a period as a decimal separator!) that confuses us. You have the
liberty of continuing that even in the areas that confuse us most, like
phone numbers that might or might not be local and date notations that
look like fractions. ObHTML: evil browsers may split a line after a
solidus "/" as well, but admittedly they mistreat the hyphen "-" even
more often, and the only effective way (for both characters) is the
abhorred nonstandard markup, except in special occasions.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

Jul 23 '05 #9

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tut.fi> wrote:

"Harlan Messinger" <h.*********@comcast.net> wrote:
Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?
Quite possibly. But it will *certainly* confuse some, who will say,
"What the heck does +19458293829 mean?"

That's not standard punctuation.

Now that I'm researching the standard Andreas provided, all I'm
finding is examples that *do* use hyphens, in spite of what he said.
In fact, the only thing lacking in the OP's format is the plus sign.
(I think it's coincidence that we have a 1 in front of our area codes.
We had local calls, intra-LATA calls, and inter-LATA calls. For local
calls, we only needed the basic seven digits. For intra-LATA calls, we
needed to tack on the area code. For inter-LATA calls, to signal the
switch that the call was to another LATA, a 1 was inserted in front.
This was unrelated to 1 being the international dialing code for the
US.)
I believe you're inflating the
scope and role of standards committees. It's not up to an
international committee to dictate local practices or to coerce
people into giving up their familiar conventions in local affairs.
The Web is not local.

You're mixing up the medium with the communication. Communications via
international media are often local. I'm not making a specious
distinction. E-mail and SMTP are international. Does that mean an
Uzbek ought to me sure he follows international standards when he
sends e-mail in Uzbek to a family member? The New York Times is read
internationally. Advertisements are placed in it by local businesses
targeting local customers, and there's no reason why they need to
internationalize their ad copy.
We are discussing authoring for the World Wide Web
here. And there are no "familiar conventions" for phone numbers even
locally but a confused mess.
We've been recognizing phone numbers here without difficulty for the
past century or more, without kibbitzing by international standards
organizations, so in what sense are there no "familiar conventions"?

I have a confession: I think that uniformity has fallen by the wayside
here. I have a recollection that phone numbers always appeared as
(xxxx) xxx-xxxx, but nowadays I see xxx-xxx-xxxx a lot too.
Since unification is needed anyway, there's
little reason not to do that by the standard.

ObHTML: There's the minor argument too that in HTML, we can easily and
effectively make a space non-breaking in a cross-browser way. The very
existence of this thread indicates this this is not the case for
hyphens.
Many of them also get confused because we Americans have the annoying
habit of writing things in English instead of the tourists' language.
Thank _you_ for saying that, even though you don't explicitly mention
that it's the "US English" with its odd notational conventions (like
using a period as a decimal separator!) that confuses us.

At least we've gotten rid of the use of letters in place of the first
two digits of the number! When we moved to the town in which I mostly
grew up, our prefix (the three digits after the area code) was 531.
Everyone who lived there before us had JE1 (Jefferson-1).

Anyway, German, Danish, and so on have their own peculiar conventions
for dates and/or times. Have all Germans and Danes stopped using those
formats in their newspapers, magazines, and Web pages?
You have the
liberty of continuing that even in the areas that confuse us most, like
phone numbers that might or might not be local and date notations that
look like fractions. ObHTML: evil browsers may split a line after a
solidus "/" as well, but admittedly they mistreat the hyphen "-" even
more often, and the only effective way (for both characters) is the
abhorred nonstandard markup, except in special occasions.

--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

Jul 23 '05 #10

Harlan Messinger <hm*******************@comcast.net> wrote:

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
"Harlan Messinger" <h.*********@comcast.net> wrote:
Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?

Quite possibly. But it will *certainly* confuse some, who will say,
"What the heck does +19458293829 mean?"
That's not standard punctuation.

Now that I'm researching the standard Andreas provided, all I'm
finding is examples that *do* use hyphens, in spite of what he said.

I'm afraid Andreas gave the wrong number. E.164 is the ITU telephone
numbering plan. It describes how and by whom telephone numbers are
assigned. The ITU recommendation that specifies how telephone numbers
(and some other contact information) are to be written as text is
ITU E.123.

There's a short overview of E.123 at
http://www.geocities.com/dtmcbride/r...e/tel-fmt.html
We've been recognizing phone numbers here without difficulty for the
past century or more, without kibbitzing by international standards
organizations, so in what sense are there no "familiar conventions"?
Which village are you referring to? I was discussing the World Wide Web,
and worldwide communication channels in general, something that has
existed (as something used by the masses) for a decade or so.
And there the confusion is very real.
I have a confession: I think that uniformity has fallen by the
wayside here. I have a recollection that phone numbers always
appeared as (xxxx) xxx-xxxx, but nowadays I see xxx-xxx-xxxx a lot
too.
And those are not the only variants. Besides, phone numbers _should_ be
in somewhat different notation, depending on whether they are in local
format or global format (with country code). But any notational
differences beyond that, differences resulting merely from varying
conventions or lack thereof, create confusions.

ObHTML: it would be nice if HTML had a <phone> element, partly because it
would let speech browsers read a phone number as a sequence of digits,
not as an integer (555 123 as five five five one two three, not as five
hundred fifty five thousand one hundred and twenty three). The usefulness
might not be obvious if you don't know the fairly common (outside the
Anglo-Saxon world, that is) convention of using a space as a thousands
separator in numbers.
Anyway, German, Danish, and so on have their own peculiar conventions
for dates and/or times. Have all Germans and Danes stopped using
those formats in their newspapers, magazines, and Web pages?

No, they have mainly just created some added confusion by using mixed
notations. Even the official statistics bureau of Finland uses American
date notation like 10/09/2004 in some of their material _in Finnish_
(with no mention of the notation).

The existence of all kinds of mixed notations, even notations that didn't
exist until recently, implies a simple rule: any date notation that uses
only numbers and punctuation is inherently unsafe, unless it is in the
ISO 8601 notation with a four-digit year, such as 2004-10-09. In
monolingual documents, where the dates need not be comprehensible at all
to people who don't know the language, it is quite OK to use traditional
notations _with the month expressed with a word_ or alphabetic
abbreviation, such as "9. lokakuuta 2004".

ObHTML: In running text, "9. lokakuuta 2004" might be a good idea,
since a line break after "9." is undesirable - a full stop at the end of
line may look like an end of sentence.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

Jul 23 '05 #11

Harlan Messinger wrote:

When we moved to the town in which I mostly grew up, our prefix (the
three digits after the area code) was 531. Everyone who lived there
before us had JE1 (Jefferson-1).

Your prefix was the same as theirs. Notice on phone keypads J=5, E=3.

(Aside: "Klondike 5" is 555 and is usually used for fake numbers in
American films.)

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jul 23 '05 #12

Toby Inkster <us**********@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:

Harlan Messinger wrote:
When we moved to the town in which I mostly grew up, our prefix (the
three digits after the area code) was 531. Everyone who lived there
before us had JE1 (Jefferson-1).
Your prefix was the same as theirs. Notice on phone keypads J=5, E=3.

I know, though I might have spelled that out in my previous posting
for those who weren't aware of it. I'm curious whether other countries
ever substituted letters for numbers. Now that I think about it,
people elsewhere probably have learned about that *now*, even if they
weren't aware of it before, because the overlay of the alphabet over
the telephone keypad is used in modern text messaging.

(Aside: "Klondike 5" is 555 and is usually used for fake numbers in
American films.)

--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

Jul 23 '05 #13

JRS: In article <Pine.GSO.4.44.0410081807210.3256-100000@s5b004>, dated
Fri, 8 Oct 2004 18:13:12, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Andreas Prilop <nh******@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de> posted :

Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.

Have you a Web reference, preferably HTML not PDF, for that standard or
for a useful subset of it?

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk DOS 3.3, 6.20; Win98. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links.
PAS EXE TXT ZIP via <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/00index.htm>
My DOS <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/batfiles.htm> - also batprogs.htm.

Jul 23 '05 #14

JRS: In article <Xn*****************************@193.229.0.31>, dated
Fri, 8 Oct 2004 17:22:28, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Jukka K. Korpela <jk******@cs.tut.fi> posted :

Likewise, dates on a
web-based calendar of events for a church in Walla Walla are going to
appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April 13, 2004, at 4:30 pm".
"2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.

What about all the potential visitorslike tourists and immigrants who get
very confused with American notations like 03/04/05 and have to guess
which number means which component of a date? (In the worst case, they
think they know well what it means.)

And, perhaps of more consequence to the Church authorities in Walla
Walla, the customary US attitude means that typical Americans never
learn what things are like in the great world outside (parts of Canada
excepted) and so cannot cope when they do find themselves outside North
America - or when they meet a date written according to FIPS.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc : <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/> - see 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm moredate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.

Jul 23 '05 #15

JRS: In article <2s*************@uni-berlin.de>, dated Fri, 8 Oct 2004
14:13:14, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Harlan
Messinger <h.*********@comcast.net> posted :

The first thing to note is
that by writing the year in four digits makes virtuallu sure that the
reader gets at least the year right. :-)

Since year 2000, I've tended to write four-digit years too: 3/15/2004. But
in daily use I stick to the local convention for the order of the date's
components.

Since everyone can recognise a four digit year, why not stick to
parochial month-day order but put the year first?

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> TP/BP/Delphi/&c., FAQqy topics & links;
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/clpb-faq.txt> RAH Prins : c.l.p.b mFAQ;
<URL:ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsfaqp.zip> Timo Salmi's Turbo Pascal FAQ.

Jul 23 '05 #16

Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

JRS: In article <2s*************@uni-berlin.de>, dated Fri, 8 Oct 2004
14:13:14, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Harlan
Messinger <h.*********@comcast.net> posted :
The first thing to note is
that by writing the year in four digits makes virtuallu sure that the
reader gets at least the year right. :-)

Since year 2000, I've tended to write four-digit years too: 3/15/2004. But
in daily use I stick to the local convention for the order of the date's
components.

Since everyone can recognise a four digit year, why not stick to
parochial month-day order but put the year first?

Because there's no reason to and because it would look strange to
people who are accustomed to the format that I do use and because they
might not even know which is the month and which is the day.

--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

Jul 23 '05 #17

Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

JRS: In article <Xn*****************************@193.229.0.31>, dated
Fri, 8 Oct 2004 17:22:28, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Jukka K. Korpela <jk******@cs.tut.fi> posted :
Likewise, dates on a
web-based calendar of events for a church in Walla Walla are going to
appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April 13, 2004, at 4:30 pm".
"2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.

What about all the potential visitorslike tourists and immigrants who get
very confused with American notations like 03/04/05 and have to guess
which number means which component of a date? (In the worst case, they
think they know well what it means.)

And, perhaps of more consequence to the Church authorities in Walla
Walla, the customary US attitude means that typical Americans never
learn what things are like in the great world outside (parts of Canada
excepted) and so cannot cope when they do find themselves outside North
America - or when they meet a date written according to FIPS.

That's really funny coming from someone who lives in a country where
everyone drives on the wrong side of the road. And where people still
speak of their weight in stones, even on internationally broadcast
television (most recently on episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight
Guy, and not long before that on Ab Fab).

--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

Jul 23 '05 #18

Stan Brown

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tut.fi> wrote in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

ObHTML: it would be nice if HTML had a <phone> element, partly because it
would let speech browsers read a phone number as a sequence of digits,
not as an integer (555 123 as five five five one two three, not as five
hundred fifty five thousand one hundred and twenty three).

Is there any speech browser anywhere that actually does read a space
as a thousands separator, in English?

I may be wrong, but I think both the UK and Australia use the
commas, as Usonians and Canadians do.

I do agree that a <phone> element would be nice -- among other
things, the style sheet could mark it as not to be split across
lines!

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Jul 23 '05 #19

Malcolm Dew-Jones

Jukka K. Korpela (jk******@cs.tut.fi) wrote:

Since unification is needed anyway, there's
: little reason not to do that by the standard.

Who says unification is needed?

Since when must we be slaves to the limitations of the current
technologies - why should these things be "simplified"? Are people so
stupid that they can't handle the complexity of doing things in a variety
of ways? (Sure people can, it's only computers that have difficulties.)

Perhaps we should "unify" all languages and force every one to speak
esperanto (or whatever).

Computers are supposed to bend to our requirements, not the other way
round.

If people in one part of the world represent telephone numbers with one
format and other people use another format then the telephone number
standards should support that, not suppress it, (just like the current
unicode standards are making it easier for different natural language
systems to coexist within computer software).

$0.04 (inflation and all)

Jul 23 '05 #20

Harlan Messinger wrote:

That's really funny coming from someone who lives in a country where
everyone drives on the wrong side of the road.
The UK, Ireland[1], India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, most
of sub-Saharan half of Africa, most of South-East Asia and parts of South
America and the Carribean drive on the LHS.

Countries that drive on the LHS generally do so because of historical
influence from the British Empire. Countries that drive on the RHS
generally do so because of historial influence from Napoleonic France.

Overall, about 3.5 billion people live in RHS countries, and 2.5 billion
in LHS countries.

It is believed that they drove on the left in the Roman Empire.

The closest thing to an International Standard on which side people should
drive on is probably the United Nations Convention on Road Traffic 1949
Article 9(1), which states that "all vehicular traffic proceeding in the
same direction on any road shall keep to the same side of the road, which
shall be uniform in each country for all roads." That is, countries are
explicitly allowed to choose which side, but must remain consistant
throughout the entire country.
And where people still speak of their weight in stones, even on
internationally broadcast television (most recently on episodes of Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy, and not long before that on Ab Fab).

America hardly conforms to the international standard (SI units) in that
regard either.

____
[1] I am told that in Ireland there is no law dictating on which side
people should drive, but they drive on the left by convention. Can anyone
confirm this?

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jul 23 '05 #21

Neal

On 9 Oct 2004 15:32:03 -0800, Malcolm Dew-Jones
<yf***@vtn1.victoria.tc.ca> wrote:

Computers are supposed to bend to our requirements, not the other way
round.

And this is an important point.

What would be ideal is a means of markup where, say, a phone number would
always be stored in a standard format, but the UA would render it in the
manner the user prefers. That isn't the world we live in right now.

As I see it, there are simply two options.

1) Stick to an official, established standard format, and rely on all
users to learn the format.

2) Use a local format which will be readily understood by your target
market, knowing that some users not familiar with the format will be
inconvenienced.

Depending on the application, either might be the better technique.

Jul 23 '05 #22

Stan Brown wrote:

I may be wrong, but I think both the UK and Australia use the
commas, as Usonians and Canadians do.

Commas are most usual, though spaces are also commonly used. If dealing
only with smaller numbers (e.g. mainly less than 100,000), often no
seperator will be used at all.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jul 23 '05 #23

yf***@vtn1.victoria.tc.ca (Malcolm Dew-Jones) wrote:

Jukka K. Korpela (jk******@cs.tut.fi) wrote:

Since unification is needed anyway, there's
: little reason not to do that by the standard.

Who says unification is needed?
Because things get uggly and hard to read when a document contains a
multitude of more or less different notations for similar items, which is
now often the case with phone numbers.

Unification is also needed on Usenet as regards to quotation conventions.
Please fix your newsreader apply the unified "> " convention for quoted
lines.
Since when must we be slaves to the limitations of the current
technologies - why should these things be "simplified"?
Beats me. "Simplified" is your word. "Unification" was mine.

I'm for simplification though, along with the principle "as simple as
possible, but not simpler". I find to see the relevance of such general
principles in this context, though.
Are people
so stupid that they can't handle the complexity of doing things in a
variety of ways?
Yes. Any more questions?
(Please remember that about 50 % of all people, and that's a _lot_ of
people, have an IQ below 100. Besides, the great majority of world's
population has much less education than you.)
Perhaps we should "unify" all languages and force every one to speak
esperanto (or whatever).

Perhaps you should decide whether you wish to make a point or play with
strawman arguments.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

Jul 23 '05 #24

Jan Roland Eriksson

On Sat, 09 Oct 2004 23:24:25 +0100, Toby Inkster
<us**********@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:

[...]

Countries that drive on the LHS generally do so because of historical
influence from the British Empire. Countries that drive on the RHS
generally do so because of historial influence from Napoleonic France.
The choice of side to ride on has historic military roots.
It is believed that they drove on the left in the Roman Empire.
Given the fact that most of us human beings are right handed, we get the
following options...

If you ride on the left side of a road you will be fully prepared to
meet any one with your sword, and so will s/he of course.

If you ride on the right side of a road you will be in a position to use
your shield to protect your self and at the same time any potential
aggressor will find it difficult to attack you with a right hand held
sword.

And yes; the Roman Empire was quite "aggressive" by nature and they did
ride/drive on the left hand side of roads.

[...]
America hardly conforms to the international standard (SI units)...

In fact they are doing a pretty good job with it, at least within the
producing industries that has not yet been outsource'd to China.

All parts of the US car industry, GM, Ford, Chrysler etc, is metric
since many years back due to the fact that they need to be compatible
with their own facilities all around the world.

The major producers of rolled stainless steel products in the US are all
metric inside[1].

The petrochemical industry is all metric, also from the fact that it is
heavily cooperating with other similar areas around the world.

Availability of metric components in the US is also fully sufficient.

One big coast to coast online distributor, McMaster-Carr, has just about
everything one can opt for. They proved to be my "lifeline" during the
time I was put in charge of the installation of a new stainless steel
rolling mill at North American Stainless Inc. in 2003.

<http://www.mcmaster.com/>

[1] Since those facilities was originally imported to the US from
Europe.

20 years ago Talley Metals Inc. purchased a complete new rolling mill to
produce stainless steel wire and rod. It was a "green field" project at
that time.

<http://www.cartech.com/talleymetals/>

In December 2001 North American Stainless Inc. purchased a complete new
rolling mill to produce stainless steel wire and rod. That one too was a
"green field" project.

<http://www.northamericanstainless.com/>

In both cases the Swedish company "Morgardshammar AB" provided the
design and engineering and all required equipment was produced here in
Europe and then shipped over to US sites for installation there.

<http://www.morgardshammar.se/>

As usual, all of the companies referenced here knows zilch about how to
build a good web site :-) Luckily I'm not employed by any of them.

--
Rex

Jul 23 '05 #25

Frances Del Rio

jmm-list-gn wrote:

Frances Del Rio wrote:
is there a non-breaking hyphen in HTML?? for example, so a phone no.
falls all on one line.. as in..

1-800-444-5454... (and is not broken into two lines if phone no.
occurs near end of a line..)

A general approach is:
css: .nobr { white-space: nowrap; }
html: 1-800-444-5454

THANK YOU!! this is exactly what I needed, a short concise answer that
would give me the info I needed.. (who would have known such a simple
question would generate such a long thread!!.....;)

Frances

Jul 23 '05 #26

Toby Inkster <us**********@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:

Harlan Messinger wrote:

And where people still speak of their weight in stones, even on
internationally broadcast television (most recently on episodes of Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy, and not long before that on Ab Fab).

America hardly conforms to the international standard (SI units) in that
regard either.

Um, hello? I know we don't. My point was, that the criticism of our
practices was coming from someone in the UK.
--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

Jul 23 '05 #27

Frederic Banaszak

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 00:11:52 -0400, Harlan Messinger
<hm*******************@comcast.net> wrote:

Toby Inkster <us**********@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:
Harlan Messinger wrote:

And where people still speak of their weight in stones, even on
internationally broadcast television (most recently on episodes of Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy, and not long before that on Ab Fab).

America hardly conforms to the international standard (SI units) in that
regard either.

Um, hello? I know we don't. My point was, that the criticism of our
practices was coming from someone in the UK.

I wouldn't worry about him too much. He's a well-known xenophobic
Usenet kook.

Jul 23 '05 #28

Frances Del Rio <fd***@yahoo.com> wrote:

A general approach is:
css: .nobr { white-space: nowrap; } html: 1-800-444-5454
THANK YOU!! this is exactly what I needed,

Actually, it isn't what you needed or need, but it's the one you decided
to use.
a short concise answer
that would give me the info I needed..
No it would not, not at least this one, as has been explained elsewhere.

And regarding conciseness, I'm pretty sure that the markup, e.g.
1-800-444-5454
was mentioned early in the thread (and it probably works more often than
the less concise CSS-dependent method).
(who would have known such a
simple question would generate such a long thread!!.....;)

Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition, or a Usenet discussion.

Regarding questions, the attribute "simple" usually reflects just
someone's incomplete analysis of the problem.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

Jul 23 '05 #29

Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:

Toby Inkster wrote:
America hardly conforms to the international standard (SI units)...

In fact they are doing a pretty good job with it, at least within the
producing industries that has not yet been outsource'd to China.

Though my quote was clearly (from the context that you snipped) referring
to bathroom scales, and not to the US manufacturing industry.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
Now Playing ~ ./ryan_adams/love_is_hell_pt1/03_this_house_is_not_for_sale.ogg

Jul 23 '05 #30

JRS: In article <Xn*****************************@193.229.0.31>, dated
Sat, 9 Oct 2004 11:57:14, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Jukka K. Korpela <jk******@cs.tut.fi> posted :

The existence of all kinds of mixed notations, even notations that didn't
exist until recently, implies a simple rule: any date notation that uses
only numbers and punctuation is inherently unsafe, unless it is in the
ISO 8601 notation with a four-digit year, such as 2004-10-09.

Using "safe, unless" there implies, in general, that the following is
not unsafe.

That's true if the Gregorian calendar is assumed; but there also the
Julian, Hebrew, Islamic, Saka (and perhaps other) calendars, currently
with four-digit years and with countable months and days of about the
Gregorian length.

What is known about their numeric notations?

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc : <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/> - see 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm moredate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.

Jul 23 '05 #31

JRS: In article <pu********************************@4ax.com>, dated
Sat, 9 Oct 2004 09:53:43, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Harlan Messinger <hm*******************@comcast.net> posted :

I know, though I might have spelled that out in my previous posting
for those who weren't aware of it. I'm curious whether other countries
ever substituted letters for numbers. Now that I think about it,
people elsewhere probably have learned about that *now*, even if they
weren't aware of it before, because the overlay of the alphabet over
the telephone keypad is used in modern text messaging.

The UK did the reverse.

In London, and I think other large cities, we used to use Exchange-name
and number, before subscriber dialling. With subscriber dialling, the
exchange-name was replaced by its TLA, and the TLA was mapped onto the
digits in a manner resembling the modern method. In order to get non-
overlapping TLS number-equivalents, IIRC, some of the TLAs were a bit
forced, the choice of new exchange names was rather forced, and (I
think) there may finally have been a few new exchanges with only TLAs.

The TLAs were abandoned in the Sixties or thereabouts, AFAIR.

Long-distant subscriber trunk dialling codes also originally used
letters; to dial a Cambridge number from within, one used 5 digits, and
to dial from without, they were preceded by the code (0)CA3, which
became 0223 and is now 01223 (to be followed by six digits).
--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Proper <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line exactly "-- " (SonOfRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SonOfRFC1036)

Jul 23 '05 #32

jmm-list-gn

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

And regarding conciseness, I'm pretty sure that the markup, e.g.
1-800-444-5454
was mentioned early in the thread (and it probably works more often than
the less concise CSS-dependent method).
Except is not a valid HTML tag. At least not for HTML 4.01
Strict. WDG Validator says, "Error: element NOBR not defined in this HTML
version."
Regarding questions, the attribute "simple" usually reflects just
someone's incomplete analysis of the problem.

And if she had said "elegant?"

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Jul 23 '05 #33

jmm-list-gn <jm***************@sohnen-moe.com> wrote:

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

And regarding conciseness, I'm pretty sure that the markup,
e.g. 1-800-444-5454
was mentioned early in the thread (and it probably works more often
than the less concise CSS-dependent method).

Except is not a valid HTML tag.

Nobody claimed it was. My statements used the key words "concise" and
"works".

Besides, according to the CSS 2 specification, white-space applies to
block level elements only, so if (and when) it works for (with no
addition settings), it's because a browser violates the specification and
does what virtually everybody thinks white-space _should_ apply to. You
might say "let's be practical". Why not be practical with then?

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

Jul 23 '05 #34

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Besides, according to the CSS 2 specification, white-space applies to
block level elements only

This is an error in the text of the specification. The intention was that
white-space ought to apply to all elements. For details, see the CSS 2.0
Errata:
http://www.w3.org/Style/css2-updates...12-errata.html

The CSS 2.1 draft allows white-space on all elements:
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/text.html#white-space-prop

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jul 23 '05 #35

JRS: In article <e5********************************@4ax.com>, dated
Sat, 9 Oct 2004 16:08:48, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Harlan Messinger <hm*******************@comcast.net> posted :

Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:
JRS: In article <Xn*****************************@193.229.0.31>, dated
Fri, 8 Oct 2004 17:22:28, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Jukka K. Korpela <jk******@cs.tut.fi> posted :

Likewise, dates on a
web-based calendar of events for a church in Walla Walla are going to
appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April 13, 2004, at 4:30 pm".
"2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.

What about all the potential visitorslike tourists and immigrants who get
very confused with American notations like 03/04/05 and have to guess
which number means which component of a date? (In the worst case, they
think they know well what it means.)

And, perhaps of more consequence to the Church authorities in Walla
Walla, the customary US attitude means that typical Americans never
learn what things are like in the great world outside (parts of Canada
excepted) and so cannot cope when they do find themselves outside North
America - or when they meet a date written according to FIPS.

That's really funny coming from someone who lives in a country where
everyone drives on the wrong side of the road. And where people still
speak of their weight in stones, even on internationally broadcast
television (most recently on episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight
Guy, and not long before that on Ab Fab).

Just because you drive on the right side of the road, you should not
think that you drive on the correct side of the road - note that you do
not drive in the right side of the car, but in the left side. Most
people are right-handed; driving as in the UK, the dominant right hand
is scarcely distracted from the vital task of steering, leaving the left
hand free to fumble with the gear lever, handbrake, radio, cigarette
lighter, passenger, ... .

Television made for the international market is not a reliable guide,
since it panders to the limitations of the prime customers - the USA is
undoubtedly still the country with the greatest product of call-
themselves-English-speakers times average-disposable-income, and we are
currently still willing to support the USA's chief export product, which
is green paper or its nominal equivalent. Now you'll tell me that,
although so firmly wedded to the Imperial system of measurement (in
spite of 1776), Americans do not use or understand the stone of 14
pounds avoirdupois.
But the UK is, and has for some while been, entirely metric except for
what directly affects the ordinary uneducated person - retail beer and
milk, personal size in common parlance, and distances & speeds on the
roads - the matters that even politicians (below the upper grades) have
to understand.

In particular, the medical profession and civil engineering are entirely
metric here.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk / ??*********@physics.org ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Correct <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line precisely "-- " (SoRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SoRFC1036)

Jul 23 '05 #36

JRS: In article <MP************************@news.odyssey.net>, dated
Sat, 9 Oct 2004 17:27:53, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Stan Brown <th************@fastmail.fm> posted :

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tut.fi> wrote in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
ObHTML: it would be nice if HTML had a <phone> element, partly because it
would let speech browsers read a phone number as a sequence of digits,
not as an integer (555 123 as five five five one two three, not as five
hundred fifty five thousand one hundred and twenty three).

Is there any speech browser anywhere that actually does read a space
as a thousands separator, in English?

I may be wrong, but I think both the UK and Australia use the
commas, as Usonians and Canadians do.

I do agree that a <phone> element would be nice -- among other
things, the style sheet could mark it as not to be split across
lines!

IMHO, <phone> is not the right word; or not always the right word for
the desired effect.

In XML, it is indeed useful to be able to specify telephone numbers,
with sub-classes such as land-line or mobile, speech or fax, etc.; but
ISTM that in HTML, where the balance of actual concern for presentation
and for meaning is different, there should first be an element for
properly treating numbers in general (including +5 -2.345 1.234E-5
1,234,567.89 1.234.567,89 and space-containing numbers) - and that
<phone> would only be justified if telephone-specific behaviour was
needed, which IMHO is probably not the case.

Pragmatically, the function deserves a reasonably short tag.

ISTM that, when a speech browser can recognise a string or substring as
being something in which thousands separators could have been, but were
not, put, then it should insert such separators (by default/optionally)
as the verbal equivalent of a Thin Space - but of course that needs
thorough usability testing.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Proper <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line exactly "-- " (SonOfRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SonOfRFC1036)

Jul 23 '05 #37

Spartanicus

Toby Inkster <us**********@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:

CSS 2.1 draft

Candidate Recommendation

--
Spartanicus

Jul 23 '05 #38

Toby Inkster <us**********@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
Besides, according to the CSS 2 specification, white-space applies
to block level elements only

This is an error in the text of the specification.

That's what I said, more or less. It's still there. It's still part of
the normative specification. No Errata (or a document mislabelled as
"Errata") or draft can change it; by the W3C process, only a new
specification changes the situation - though they have done quite a lot
to confuse people's minds about this.

Omitting from HTML specifications might be treated as an error too
though maybe with a little more disagreement. So where's the big
difference? Changing white-space from applying to block elements to
applying to all elements is a substantial change, not a typo fix.

My point is that if you wish to stick to W3C specifications, you have a
hard time. Getting picky about is disproportionate if you are
(for the very sake of frowning upon for this this)
about to rely on behavior that violates the CSS specification.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

Jul 23 '05 #39

Andy Dingley

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 11:45:42 -0700, jmm-list-gn
<jm***************@sohnen-moe.com> wrote:

Except is not a valid HTML tag. At least not for HTML 4.01
Strict

So don't use Strict. If you're feeding a world of transitional
browsers (and worse), then use the Transitional DTD.

--
Smert' spamionam

Jul 23 '05 #40

Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

IMHO, <phone> is not the right word; or not always the right word for
the desired effect.

In XML, it is indeed useful to be able to specify telephone numbers,
with sub-classes such as land-line or mobile, speech or fax, etc.; but
ISTM that in HTML, where the balance of actual concern for presentation
and for meaning is different, there should first be an element for
properly treating numbers in general (including +5 -2.345 1.234E-5
1,234,567.89 1.234.567,89 and space-containing numbers) - and that
<phone> would only be justified if telephone-specific behaviour was
needed, which IMHO is probably not the case.

A phone number isn't really a number, though. It's a code that happens
to consist, by an arbitrary convention, entirely of digits. Numbers
convey a quantity, a value, magnitude. Telephone numbers don't.
--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

Jul 23 '05 #41

Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

JRS: In article <e5********************************@4ax.com>, dated
Sat, 9 Oct 2004 16:08:48, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Harlan Messinger <hm*******************@comcast.net> posted :
That's really funny coming from someone who lives in a country where
everyone drives on the wrong side of the road. And where people still
speak of their weight in stones, even on internationally broadcast
television (most recently on episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight
Guy, and not long before that on Ab Fab).
Just because you drive on the right side of the road, you should not
think that you drive on the correct side of the road - note that you do
not drive in the right side of the car, but in the left side.

The rationale for using a different convention is irrelevant to this
discussion. We're talking about the alleged intransigence inherent in
the very fact of doing things differently from everybody else.

[snip]
Now you'll tell me that,
although so firmly wedded to the Imperial system of measurement (in
spite of 1776), Americans do not use or understand the stone of 14
pounds avoirdupois.
Allow me to enlighten you: Americans by and large do *not* know that
Brits have a unit of weight called the stone, that it is the usual
primary unit used to measure the weight of a person, and that it is
equal to 14 pounds. In fact, when "Queer Eye - UK Edition", as it's
titled here, is broadcast, explanatory text appears in subtitles when
Britishisms are used that are largely unknown here. When someone
mentions having lost 2 stone 7, a subtitle explains that this is 35
pounds.

FYI our liquid measures are not equal to the like-named Imperial
measures.

But the UK is, and has for some while been, entirely metric except for
what directly affects the ordinary uneducated person - retail beer and
milk, personal size in common parlance, and distances & speeds on the
roads - the matters that even politicians (below the upper grades) have
to understand.

In particular, the medical profession and civil engineering are entirely
metric here.

You've got a lot of excuses for someone who was so quick to
characterize the US as an outstanding flouter of international
standards.

--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

Jul 23 '05 #42

Andreas Prilop

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:

Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.

Have you a Web reference, preferably HTML not PDF, for that standard or
for a useful subset of it?

Sorry, no. And it seems it was the wrong number (Pun! Pun!) anyway.
Please refer to <news:comp.std.internat>

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

Jul 23 '05 #43

Andy Dingley wrote:

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 11:45:42 -0700, jmm-list-gn
<jm***************@sohnen-moe.com> wrote:
Except is not a valid HTML tag. At least not for HTML 4.01
Strict

So don't use Strict. If you're feeding a world of transitional
browsers (and worse), then use the Transitional DTD.

It ain't in transitional either. But it is pretty easy to create your own
DTD that includes it if you're worried about validating.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jul 23 '05 #44

Harlan Messinger wrote:

The rationale for using a different convention is irrelevant to this
discussion. We're talking about the alleged intransigence inherent in
the very fact of doing things differently from everybody else.

Though as I pointed out the UK is not "doing things differently from
everybody else" when it comes to driving on the left. It's doing things
the same as plenty of other contries, including Ireland, Japan, India,
Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, most of sub-Saharan Africa, most of
South-East Asia and parts of South America.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jul 23 '05 #45

Barbara de Zoete

Op Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:56:17 +0100, schreef Toby Inkster
<us**********@tobyinkster.co.uk>:

Harlan Messinger wrote:
The rationale for using a different convention is irrelevant to this
discussion. We're talking about the alleged intransigence inherent in
the very fact of doing things differently from everybody else.

Though as I pointed out the UK is not "doing things differently from
everybody else" when it comes to driving on the left. It's doing things
the same as plenty of other contries, including Ireland, Japan, India,
Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, most of sub-Saharan Africa, most of
South-East Asia and parts of South America.

Except for Japan, remind me of the (former) terratory of the British
Colonies, if you please. As far as I can see, you just gave a pretty
accurate descrition of the former British Empire.
So no surprise people driving on the left hand side of the road. It once
was just the British Empire "doing things differently from everybode
else". :-)

--
Barbara

PretLetters <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/>
Webontwerp <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html>
Zweefvliegen <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html>

Jul 23 '05 #46

George Lund

In message <Xn*****************************@193.229.0.31>, Jukka K.
Korpela <jk******@cs.tut.fi> writes

Thank _you_ for saying that, even though you don't explicitly mention
that it's the "US English" with its odd notational conventions (like
using a period as a decimal separator!) that confuses us.
Now hang on! If we're going to drift OT anyway I feel at liberty to
point out that in Britain we've been using decimal points rather than
commas since at least John Napier in the 1619. So there are many
millions of Europeans that are confused by the comma, if you want to
think of it that way.

And anyway, if we don't like the standards we change 'em :-)SI used only a comma as the separator for decimal fractions until 1997.
The number "twenty four and fifty one hundredths" would be written as
"24,51". In 1997 the CIPM decided that the British full stop (the "dot
on the line", or period) would be the decimal separator in text whose
main language is English ("24.51"); the comma remains the decimal
separator in all other languages.

[according to that wondrously dubious source that is Wikipedia]

--
George Lund

Jul 23 '05 #47

Andy Dingley

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:52:49 +0100, Toby Inkster
<us**********@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:

It ain't in transitional either.

Ha ! Sheer force of habit - I assumed we were talking about target
yet again !
Did or (or I guess ) ever make it into any W3 DTD
proposals, or was it only ever Netscape ?

Jul 23 '05 #48

Malcolm Dew-Jones

Harlan Messinger (hm*******************@comcast.net) wrote:
: Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

: >IMHO, <phone> is not the right word; or not always the right word for
: >the desired effect.
: >
: >In XML, it is indeed useful to be able to specify telephone numbers,
: >with sub-classes such as land-line or mobile, speech or fax, etc.; but
: >ISTM that in HTML, where the balance of actual concern for presentation
: >and for meaning is different, there should first be an element for
: >properly treating numbers in general (including +5 -2.345 1.234E-5
: >1,234,567.89 1.234.567,89 and space-containing numbers) - and that
: ><phone> would only be justified if telephone-specific behaviour was
: >needed, which IMHO is probably not the case.

: A phone number isn't really a number, though. It's a code that happens
: to consist, by an arbitrary convention, entirely of digits. Numbers
: convey a quantity, a value, magnitude. Telephone numbers don't.

Agreed.

Further more, in general a telephone number is actually an instruction on
how to tell the phone to make contact.

The "number" to reach a specific phone may require meta information. An
extension is a simple example. The extension number is required to
complete the connection to the remote telephone, but the numbers cannot be
entered as part of the initial set of numbers to start the call.

Technologies such as old mobile phones or party lines (all still used in
some parts of the world) can have additional requirements which are
included as part of the telephone "number" if you are trying to place a
call to them.

Jul 23 '05 #49