Re: Thai Numbering in gnome-doc-utils

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Shaun McCance wrote:

> On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 22:14 +0000, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
>  
>
> > Shaun McCance wrote:
> >    
> >
> > > So that said, Simos, do you need Greek alphabetic numbering
> > > to be supported by gnome-doc-utils?
> > >
> > >
> > >      
> > We would love to have Greek numerals supported!
> >
> > However, the current locale support in CSS3 [1] appears to be quite 
> > suboptimal for Greek.
> > The Greek alphabetic numbering follows the legacy of Ancient Greek which 
> > adds three letter-numbers [2].
> > Specifically, it introduces three letters (for 6, 90, 900) that shift 
> > the letters to the right:
> > 6, 90, 900
> > are represented by
> > ϛ (in modern Greek: στ), ϟ, ϡ
> >
> > According to [1], CSS3 does not take into account any of those 
> > characters and especially "στ".
> > Therefore, there is the issue of correctness for 6, 7, 8, and so on.
> >
> > In addition, CSS3 is not good with the capitalisation (changing case) of 
> > Greek text, as there are specific rules that drop accents, and in some 
> > cases this depends on the context (based on the word).
> >
> > It appears that when CSS3 was being drafted, there was no feedback for 
> > Greek :(
> >
> > Therefore, it would be better for Greek not to use alphabetic numerals 
> > through CSS3 at this moment for issues of correctness.
> > For the record, I sent an e-mail to this CSS3 working group in case it 
> > is possible to fix the missing letters. Thanks for bringing the issue to 
> > my attention.
> >    
>
> Well, gnome-doc-utils doesn't use CSS for most of its numbering.
> It uses calculators built into my XSLT code.  It then formats
> these using either stock XSLT number formtters or code that I've
> written to handle a specific number system.
>
> The exception is actual ordered lists in DocBook.  Currently,
> those do use CSS.  There's also currently no way to specify
> which numbering system to use.  It's a problem I'd like to
> solve, but I'm not sure how best to solve it.
>
> The primary reason I brought up CSS is that it appears to be
> a decent reference for numbering systems which I may need to
> implement in XSLT.  But as we've seen, it's just not the best
> reference.
>
> (It is nonetheless good that you've emailed the working group
> for CSS3.  CSS3 is still only a Working Draft, so they may be
> able to address the issues before finalizing it.)
>  
I actually got a reply a few minutes which is amazing. I will follow on 
on this, though I was told
it might take quite some time before the standardisation.

> So here's the Wikipedia entry on Greek numerals:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals
>
> Would you consider its definition of the Ionic numeral system
> to be correct?  Would you prefer ϛ´ or στ´ be used for 6?
> Also, I don't think I've ever seen a document with a million
> sections, so I'm going to assume it's all right for me to
> stop trying after 999,999.
>  
Indeed, it is ok to go up to 999,999.
For number 6 please use   στ´
For 90 and 900, use the standard Ancient Greek symbols. In practical 
terms I believe those two numbers will not pop up very often.
It is the most common in modern Greek, though there are some occurences 
of  ϛ´.
(Source: http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1938.pdf)

> Do you need upper- and lowercase versions of this?  Does
> weird stuff happen when I uppercase the numbers?
>  
Yes, we need upper-case for the alphabetic numbers. There are no 
exceptions when individual letters change case.

> The page also describes the acrophonic Attic numerals, which
> look considerably harder to implement.  Do you need these in
> any document formatting stuff?
>  
Acrophonic Attic numerals are not used nowdays, so there is no need to 
implement.

Many thanks for all,
Simos