Kit·blog — Comments on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Kit·blog Comments — Radu on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:18:16 +0200

Reply no.: 1. On 27 Oct 2008, 1:18 PM, Radu wrote: ]]>

Thoroughly documented and informative article.
If only shitty designers read your blog and cared…

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:33:41 +0200

Reply no.: 2. On 27 Oct 2008, 1:33 PM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Thank you, Radu. It's not really for the hopelessly irresponsible designers—nobody can change them—but for those who didn't know or didn't really paid any attention to this matter, and a memento for those who know but tend to forget.

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Kit·blog Comments — johno on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:18:57 +0200

Reply no.: 3. On 27 Oct 2008, 4:18 PM, johno wrote: ]]>

Great article. And, of course, it's not only Romanian that suffers from this malady.

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:12:18 +0200

Reply no.: 4. On 28 Oct 2008, 2:12 PM, Kit wrote: ]]>

I'm sure that many had hard times with diacritics, but probably few had such hard times, Johno.

ISO 8859‑2 (Latin 2) standard, Unicode version 1.1.5, Microsoft's philosophy and local incompetence were such harmful blows that we still suffer the consequences, more than 20 years later.

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Kit·blog Comments — Iulian on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:35:10 +0200

Reply no.: 5. On 28 Oct 2008, 6:35 PM, Iulian wrote: ]]>

I have a NOKIA 6120 that performs flawlessly when it comes to correct diacritics usage. I was actually surprised to see T/S-comma and A-breve being dispayed while browsing the Internet, instead of the usual T/S-cedilla and A-caron.

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:00:36 +0200

Reply no.: 6. On 28 Oct 2008, 9:00 PM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Thanks for the observation, Iulian—I've updated the respective bullet point.

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Kit·blog Comments — Iulian on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:48:00 +0200

Reply no.: 7. On 28 Oct 2008, 9:48 PM, Iulian wrote: ]]>

Too bad it's gotten to the point where it's a surprise to see the correct diacritics being used/displayed frowny face

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Kit·blog Comments — sorin on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:57:15 +0200

Reply no.: 8. On 29 Oct 2008, 11:57 AM, sorin wrote: ]]>

Nice article about Romanian support. I've missed to note the http://www.i18n.ro website.

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Kit·blog Comments — George on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:24:39 +0200

Reply no.: 9. On 30 Oct 2008, 2:24 AM, George wrote: ]]>

Bookmark worthy. Congrats on the research work!

I wrote a rather lengthy piece myself on this several years ago, in PC Magazine Romania, where I made the same attempt to document the mess that we're in and to raise awareness regarding long term consequences. I was surprised then to have been met with hostility by some technical readers who were quite comfortable with the status quo. I am equally disappointed to see, all these years later, fellow Web developers who can't be bothered to read up even the basics about character sets. We shouldn't blame it all on Microsoft or the lack of keyboards.

I do disagree with one point that you are making. Dropping the pesky letters altogether is absolutely not a solution. Not in any circumstance that involves something other than ephemera. My main concern in the article that I wrote was not so much glyphs, but codepoints. That's what makes or breaks forward compatibility. We are fortunate enough that Google seems to handle the codepoint soup well, but if I worked for a website which accumulated content, I would make sure that my text can be properly indexed (proper names and everything) and that my databases can be properly sorted in the future.

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Kit·blog Comments — Bogdan on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:37:23 +0200

Reply no.: 10. On 30 Oct 2008, 5:37 AM, Bogdan wrote: ]]>

@george:
The suggestion to drop the impossiblydifficulttoreproducecorrectlyglyphs® was sarcasm towards the indolent Romanians. That our status as a culturally relevant nation is mediocre might be understandable, considering our location at the periphery and our troubled history, the isolation in communism, etc. When these standards were created in the west, we simply weren't a priority. Also the Romanian language have that pesky sh, similar with the Turkish one - although ours was first :), actually the Czechs invented it at the beginning of the 19th century - a situation which added to the confusion. I myself prefer the shape of the s with cedilla, the Turkish one, but the problem arises in the t with cedilla, because you cannot really center it under the t hook. Nevertheless, our Academy doesn't give a fucking shit on the fucking standards and the users of our language don't care and respect a fucking bit their mother tongue anyway. The romantic times when the Romanians, educated in Berlin and Paris, gave a fucking fuck about building and polishing the sound and the form of their language are over. Our generation is not up to the job of dealing with 5 annoying glyphs. We blame the 'others', the 'rich and arrogant' creators of the standards, for our misery. Let's face it, we are unable to manage that complexity. Because we don't love or care about our language, as we don't care about our cities. These bastard letters we use are the termopane of our writing. A down to earth, real tipographik approach to our incapacity of solving the issue, is to scrap the whole thing altogether. That is, not to use diacritics at all :P

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Kit·blog Comments — Dragos on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:33:23 +0200

Reply no.: 11. On 30 Oct 2008, 4:33 PM, Dragos wrote: ]]>

Not sure that I remember correctly (long time ago) but I think that when Apple introduced the Romanian keyboard and fonts in the '90-ies they had the ă written with caron, besides the usual cedilla under s and t. I know I was quite angry at their crappy implementation back then, but anyway happy that somebody takes the time to consider it.
Is there any historical record about how ş and ţ were supposed to look, for example 40 years ago?
As far as I know, the comma under s and t was supposed to be smaller than the usual punctuation comma, and this can be seen in lots of books published in Romania before 1989, using "traditional" typographic methods.

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Kit·blog Comments — chuck on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:51:15 +0200

Reply no.: 12. On 30 Oct 2008, 4:51 PM, chuck wrote: ]]>

I tend to believe that you described a purely aesthetic problem. Language and writing are invented, not discovered, and this makes them conventions. They were evolveing or more precisely changing slowly over time some hundreds/thounsands of years ago. The change is faster now when communication is more advanced between cultural groups. More importantly, I think they change through being used by the regular people who care not for typography or grammar.

I dont see the improvement in using the "corect" glyph instead of the "incorrect" one. Everybody can understand what is written on the bancnote that you used as an example, even if it s not the "correct" glyph, I think even if it was a point many people would still understand.

The form of the glyph is not so important in my opinion, but the absence of the glyph is, the word could have a totally diferent meaning.

Maybe it's not the right comparison, but when I was in the school I was learned that I should write "sint" and now the kids are learning that corect is "sunt" so in the end I think it's not a matter of correct and incorrect form but merely of adapting to constant change.

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Kit·blog Comments — Vali on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:01:54 +0200

Reply no.: 13. On 30 Oct 2008, 6:01 PM, Vali wrote: ]]>

Great article, I never really paid attention to the Șș and Țț, looked at my old designs and found only 2 mistakes, now I know what to look for in diacritics

on a side note my OSX keyboard is engraved correctly (it shipped with Tiger)

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:22:22 +0200

Reply no.: 14. On 30 Oct 2008, 8:22 PM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Chuck, á txt is prtty müch undrstndable évn heåvily mutilątd and with missng vowls—let alone w/o diacrïtx or the wrng ones—but that doesnt mean we sẖld write lke thŝ, because as designers we are the custodians of the visual communication language.

It is more than esthetics. It's culture. We should stand accountable for vandalizing it.

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Kit·blog Comments — pars on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:46:38 +0200

Reply no.: 15. On 30 Oct 2008, 11:46 PM, pars wrote: ]]>

great work.

however, our language changes, as we are changing.

i mean, we are writing this in English, instead of Romanian as a pure, functional convention, so more people can join the discussion.

yes, we are lazy on searching for the correct stuff, but that is our nature.

nature that transforms. i think this is the culture also.

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Kit·blog Comments — alecs stan on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:02:59 +0200

Reply no.: 16. On 31 Oct 2008, 5:02 PM, alecs stan wrote: ]]>

great article ! thanks for the time it took to write it, and thanks because you care.

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Kit·blog Comments — Rob Keller on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:22:52 +0200

Reply no.: 17. On 31 Oct 2008, 9:22 PM, Rob Keller wrote: ]]>

Very nice article and thorough history of these diacritics!

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Kit·blog Comments — Lucian on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:54:23 +0200

Reply no.: 18. On 1 Nov 2008, 1:54 AM, Lucian wrote: ]]>

Free software translations into Romanian often had no diacritics for some time. Current translations now use the correct form.

Romanian translations for Debian Lenny are supposed to be free of sedila diacritics. As far as I can see the newly launched Ubuntu 8.10 lacks them.

The default romanian keyboard layout on Debian and Ubuntu (at least) inserts the correct ones too. At least free software seems to get it correct. Though late too.

Wikipedia România knows about the use of sedilla characters in it's texts, but refuse to change all articles to commabellow because of the major fuckage that would create for XP users without the servicepack.

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:33:13 +0200

Reply no.: 19. On 1 Nov 2008, 12:33 PM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Thank you for reporting from the Linux front, Lucian—that's a territory I was afraid of while mining for information because of its astronomical diversity and my lack of knowledge.

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Kit·blog Comments — Iulian on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:47:52 +0200

Reply no.: 20. On 3 Nov 2008, 11:47 AM, Iulian wrote: ]]>

The saaad, sad truth is that it does come down to conventions, regardless of all the rules.

If enough people use caron, cedilla and tilde (if they use them at all, given the growing diacritics-laziness), we'll end up stuck with them.

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:42:18 +0200

Reply no.: 21. On 3 Nov 2008, 2:42 PM, Kit wrote: ]]>

I don't buy this "we should go with the flow" stance.

A lot of people spit on the sidewalk—I trust we will not consider this a rule and abide by it. Sometimes we're not supposed to be mimicking the behavior of a certain group, but we're supposed to be changing it. It's called education.

My article tries to demonstrate that for a long while most people did not have any choice but to disregard the language rules. Those times are about to end as the correct standards are set and their implementation is well on its way. Now they do have a choice and we should inform those who don't know—and remind those who tend to forget—which is the correct one.

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Kit·blog Comments — Ovidiu Hrin on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:03:11 +0200

Reply no.: 22. On 3 Nov 2008, 4:03 PM, Ovidiu Hrin wrote: ]]>

... not to mention the fact that the spacing between A L A ( in ...NationaLA... ) on the banknote depicts the attention to detail and interest in good letterspacing and the attention to detail we as a nation are very well known for. Poor typography as well ( see also the distance between RO MANIEI to catch my drift ).

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Kit·blog Comments — Simon Pascal Klein on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:53:50 +0200

Reply no.: 23. On 4 Nov 2008, 2:53 PM, Simon Pascal Klein wrote: ]]>

Informative piece with an apt summary. Thank you.

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Kit·blog Comments — Iulian Puiu on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:57:20 +0200

Reply no.: 24. On 5 Nov 2008, 1:57 PM, Iulian Puiu wrote: ]]>

Great article. Congratulations. :)

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Kit·blog Comments — Kurko Janos on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:22:58 +0200

Reply no.: 25. On 8 Nov 2008, 2:22 PM, Kurko Janos wrote: ]]>

Most informative and alarming!
As some here already noted the main issue here is not necessary about the actual design or the aesthetics of the diacritics.
is about the lack of decency, professionalism and poor education!
(taking about designers / officials from the Romanian Academic environment etc.)

We can change this! ;-)

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Kit·blog Comments — Cristian Ciupitu on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:58:08 +0200

Reply no.: 26. On 10 Nov 2008, 8:58 PM, Cristian Ciupitu wrote: ]]>

Excellent article! Thank you.

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Kit·blog Comments — alex n on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 08:59:56 +0200

Reply no.: 27. On 14 Dec 2008, 8:59 AM, alex n wrote: ]]>

Great article Kit, i guess it involved a great amount of digging.

@Ovidiu Hrin: that's the space between two separate words: 'Naţională' and 'A'

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Kit·blog Comments — SAM on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:37:39 +0200

Reply no.: 28. On 8 Jan 2009, 5:37 AM, SAM wrote: ]]>

I am--and absolutely certain of what I am saying--for eliminating the diacriticals from the Romanian language. The peculiar sounds of Romanian langauge are no farther or closer from the letters that carry them than many English phonems that are nowhere near the actual values of the letters that represent them. So, why not save a lot of dough, effort and other things, and just forget about the ş, ţ, î, etc...

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Kit·blog Comments — cB on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:07:06 +0200

Reply no.: 29. On 30 Jan 2009, 11:07 AM, cB wrote: ]]>

- an excellent article!!! smart comments!
off topic: 'Please use English for comments. Be responsible.' - may I ask you why just in english?

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:40:09 +0200

Reply no.: 30. On 30 Jan 2009, 11:40 AM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Thank you, CB.

English helps people aggregate knowledge: a few days ago Czech type designer David Březina could reference this article in his article on diacritics, for instance.

English is like an open standard—keeps this web site open. I don't see a benefit in making it closed and provincial.

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Kit·blog Comments — Adrian on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:34:57 +0200

Reply no.: 31. On 4 Feb 2009, 11:34 PM, Adrian wrote: ]]>

I still haven't figured out why letters Y and Z switch when you change the keyboard layout to Romanian in Windows XP. It is also "available" with the Legacy standard in Vista.
As I recall this is not an issue on MacOS X. I believe it wasn't in OS 9 either.

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Kit·blog Comments — Buchwald on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:02:23 +0200

Reply no.: 32. On 26 Feb 2009, 12:02 AM, Buchwald wrote: ]]>

They say ignorance is bliss. Not in this case. :) Your article is a real blessing for us, the 'juniors'.

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Kit·blog Comments — RandomPixels on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:35:54 +0200

Reply no.: 33. On 7 Mar 2009, 1:35 PM, RandomPixels wrote: ]]>

this is a great article, and it reminded me of the flag colors' standardization problem.

congrats and keep up the good work!

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Kit·blog Comments — Umur Çelikyay on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:46:15 +0200

Reply no.: 34. On 23 Mar 2009, 12:46 PM, Umur Çelikyay wrote: ]]>

This is a fascinating article my friend. You have painstakingly covered all of the issues. I am Turkish and so much of what you are talking about seems so familiar. It took the computing industry years to adapt Turkish characters into the various computer operating systems. In the beginning, the organizations responsible for Turkish standards did next to nothing to accommodate or oversee the integration. I am sorry that I do not have the kind of specific details you have, with dates, etc.

Today, the Unicode implementation is seemingly complete but we have ended up with a keyboard layout that is not fitting the Turkish language at all. The letters `Q` and `W` which do not exist in Turkish have prominent places on the keyboard while common letters are assigned to awkward locations.

The biggest issue is not that though. Out of pure laziness, many Turkish people--in some cases even educated people--are refusing to use the proper diacritical characters and substituting others. in the end the same "embarrassing mess" exists for Turkish too. Unfortunately most people do not seem to care.

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:07:53 +0200

Reply no.: 35. On 23 Mar 2009, 3:07 PM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Thank you for taking the time to share with us the similar situation you're experiencing in Turkey.

And I'm sure that our countries are not alone in this—left behind (for various reasons, including our own fault) and struggling to get back in line.

Thank you again.

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Kit·blog Comments — Mihai Olteanu on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:05:35 +0200

Reply no.: 36. On 20 Apr 2009, 8:05 PM, Mihai Olteanu wrote: ]]>

I just have one point to make: it seems that Â (A with circumflex) doesn't really exist in the written language, as this implies appearance at the beginning of the word, yet, â/Â used at the beginning of the word turns into î/Î; your article gives the impression that Â really is a valid character.

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:29:03 +0200

Reply no.: 37. On 21 Apr 2009, 2:29 AM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Interesting observation, Mihai, yet not entirely true—if you're using upper case (like BANCA NAȚIONALĂ A ROMÂNIEI on the bancnotes), A circumflex is obviously a valid character.

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Kit·blog Comments — cug on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:02:26 +0200

Reply no.: 38. On 14 Jun 2009, 4:02 AM, cug wrote: ]]>

Glad to see people care.

Standards are valuable if they are followed.
However standards have no chance in Romania. Not enough people to give a damn about them. I work as a programmer and use the special characters when writing in Romanian. And you couldn't believe how many fellow programmers ask me: "why do you strugle to use those special characters?". "well, because it's the correct way to do it, because people who read don't have to think twice in order to understand some of the words". "but, why?".
Or: "I'm not able to see the special characters in your IM Status". "You don't have the fonts. You can install them. Here's the link". "Bweah!.."
Let's say these are non-educated people, although programmers and supposedlyy wary of computing concepts like fonts, characters and glyphs.

Another great pain in the Romanian language is the â vs î wudgeukolit. The latest standard, 2005, is to use â inside of the word and î at the head and tail.
And here you are, some newspapers find the standard incorrect and ignore it completely. So do some printing houses. So do even some people involved in translation projects.
What could you expect but the "e lătúri" kind of feeling. A Standard needs
each and every to comply to meet its definition.

But let us not forget the nice and dandy:
Windows Vista and the soon 7 come with the romanian fonts available out of the box, as well as the standard keyboard layout for people to be able to write the special characters should they like to.
ro.wiki*.org will be able to switch from cedilla to commabelow characters once the adoption rate becomes inviting.
The Linux distribution I used have never had problems. UTF-8 locale allow for șț to be used even in file and directory names. Lots of fonts supporting the special characters as first class members.

You mentioned Cristian Secară in the article. It's Secară and not Secărică

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:37:21 +0200

Reply no.: 39. On 14 Jun 2009, 12:37 PM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Thank you for taking the time to comment here, CUG.

Sorry for the name confusion (Secărică instead of Secară) — I corrected that already thanks to your note.

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Kit·blog Comments — SpookyET on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:07:13 +0200

Reply no.: 40. On 13 Aug 2009, 8:07 AM, SpookyET wrote: ]]>

I remember reading a story about how 4 people wrote the latest edition of the DEX dictionary at the Romanian Academy. The day after it has been published, TV stations have started to write "niciun" instead of "nici un". Since when do the words 'nici', meaning 'not even', and 'un', meaning 'one' need to be one word?

How in the bloody hell 4 self-obsessed, over-educated individuals can be in charge of the language of 22 million? It makes no sense. Why is the communist-loved and forced î still in the dictionary? We have had â for far longer. There is no point in having two symbols for the same sound. Should one be crucified for writing "âmpărat" instead of "împărat"? If it's so important to keep the Latin heritage, let's use a closer to Latin pronunciation, 'impărat' or even closer 'imperat' from 'imperator' (Latin).

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Kit·blog Comments — FarAwayFromRomania on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:18:42 +0200

Reply no.: 41. On 9 Sep 2009, 9:18 PM, FarAwayFromRomania wrote: ]]>

Thank you very much for this info.Why don't you make a online petition to be signed ? I'm in Before is too late !

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Kit·blog Comments — Costi on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:30:06 +0200

Reply no.: 42. On 22 Sep 2009, 2:30 PM, Costi wrote: ]]>

For Mihai Olteanu:
The point about Â not existing in the written language might seem valid, but only when referring to the hand written language (per se - that is language written by hand).
HOWEVER... Think about TITLES. Such as:
CÂND OARE VA FI GATA AUTOSTRADA BUCUREŞTI - PLOIEŞTI?
or the ever popular:
CÂINE RĂU
You can also consider capitals written by hand...
So should it or should it not be considered a valid written caracter?!? In my opinion (and I believe I've somewhat made a point here) it should!

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Kit·blog Comments — Tom on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:53:26 +0200

Reply no.: 43. On 27 Oct 2009, 3:53 PM, Tom wrote: ]]>

Excellent post.

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Kit·blog Comments — bogdi on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:08:25 +0200

Reply no.: 44. On 28 Nov 2009, 4:08 PM, bogdi wrote: ]]>

Thank you for this article, I so badly needed an English language resource to point people to, when trying to explain the romanian diacritics (or lack of thereof) problem. I'm painfully aware of it and want to help solve it in a correct manner. Yóü rułę.

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Kit·blog Comments — günter on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:24:24 +0200

Reply no.: 45. On 20 Dec 2009, 6:24 PM, günter wrote: ]]>

I'm missing one point. Since when is uning the comma instead of the cedilla the published standard? The autor complains that everything whent wrong for so many years, but states that the academy gave a definite answer to the question only in 2003.

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Kit·blog Comments — alexpro on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:55:56 +0200

Reply no.: 46. On 23 Dec 2009, 7:55 AM, alexpro wrote: ]]>

Do you have any information about Windows 7 and/or Office 2010? Maybe some problems will go away....

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Kit·blog Comments — dann on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:43:13 +0200

Reply no.: 47. On 5 Mar 2010, 3:43 PM, dann wrote: ]]>

I was looking for more informations about romanian diacritics, and it was a pleasure to read this nicely
written article. Very informative and clean!

By the way the article was the first item in the google search list!

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Kit·blog Comments — Dragos Stefan on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:10:03 +0200

Reply no.: 48. On 29 Jun 2010, 11:10 AM, Dragos Stefan wrote: ]]>

For the record, the included fonts in the Google Android operating system (the Droid family made by Ascender) are a complete mess. T with comma is wrongly placed on the codes of T with cedilla, while the the codes for T with comma are empty. It is impossible to correctly type in Romanian on a stock Android phone.

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Kit·blog Comments — pax on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:51:02 +0200

Reply no.: 49. On 29 Jun 2010, 12:51 PM, pax wrote: ]]>

I have an Android handset bought from Vodafone Romania but I couldn't find the diacritics (long pressing the a, t, s) doesn't get me anywhere, even when the locale is on Romanian.

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:50:34 +0200

Reply no.: 50. On 29 Jun 2010, 1:50 PM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Thank you Dragos — and Pax for confirming this — I'll apend your report to the "saga".

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Kit·blog Comments — Mihai on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:46:31 +0200

Reply no.: 51. On 29 Jun 2010, 7:46 PM, Mihai wrote: ]]>

Detailed story for Android:
U+014E, U+015F = Ss with cedilla glyphs
U+0162, U+0163 = Tt with comma glyphs
U+0218, U+0219 = Ss with comma glyphs
U+021A, U+021B = nothing

With the standard Android keyboard you can't produce any form of ST (comma or cedilla).

The "Romanian Keyboard for Android" (http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/tools/romanian-keyboard_gkaz.html) generates the U+01xx characters.

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Kit·blog Comments — Dragos Stefan on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:36:50 +0200

Reply no.: 52. On 29 Jun 2010, 11:36 PM, Dragos Stefan wrote: ]]>

A mail I got from Ascender today is saying that "...these are all known bugs and have been fixed. The new fonts are going to be redelivered in the fall with the next rev of Android."
Time will tell.

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:27:09 +0200

Reply no.: 53. On 30 Jun 2010, 9:27 AM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Thanks for contributing to this, Mihai. Are you sure U+0162, U+0163 render as Tt with comma glyphs? Those codes should resolve to Tt with cedilla — thus leaving Android unable to display the correct Tt with comma glyphs. Even if it does, it is not good at all, because Tt with comma glyphs should be mapped to U+021A, U+021B.

What Android version(s) are we talking about? 2.1? 2.2 anyone?

So current version(s) of Android is (are) not capable to display letters with Romanian diacritic marks correctly and are completely unable to generate them out of the box. In order to make diacritics available "Romanian Keyboard for Android" has to be downloaded and installed. Is this correct?

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:36:25 +0200

Reply no.: 54. On 30 Jun 2010, 9:36 AM, Kit wrote: ]]>

Ouch! The Romanian Keyboard for Android sports a glaring Turkish S-cedilla on its icon.

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Kit·blog Comments — Michal on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:47:55 +0200

Reply no.: 55. On 28 Jul 2010, 3:47 PM, Michal wrote: ]]>

Thank you for this article which helped me understand the situation of Romanian diacritic marks a bit. It's really a pain in my eyes when reading YouTube comments from Romanian and Moldovan users without diacritics. For me as a Czech, writing without them is something absolutely beyond my imagination. Of course, there are many Czechs crippling our language by ignoring diacritics, but I think situation in Slovakia is much worse. We should preserve the standards and treasure our languages with all those Č's, Ă's and Ů's - they are a part of it.

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Kit·blog Comments — Mihai on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:33:51 +0200

Reply no.: 56. On 10 Aug 2010, 12:33 AM, Mihai wrote: ]]>

Sorry Kit, I did not check this comments for a while.
Yes, U+0162, U+0163 render with comma (bad), and U+021A, U+021B are missing.
Tested on Froyo (2.2), with Nexus One.

Used http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/reference/unicode-map_glyl.html to see the font, and I have also got the font and installed on Windows, then inspected it with this http://mihai-nita.net/2007/09/08/charmapex-some-kind-of-character-map.

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Kit·blog Comments — Kit on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:44:39 +0200

Reply no.: 57. On 10 Aug 2010, 12:44 AM, Kit wrote: ]]>

So my observation that "current version(s) of Android is (are) not capable to display letters with Romanian diacritic marks correctly and are completely unable to generate them out of the box" stays relevant. Thanks, Mihai.

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Kit·blog Comments — Lucian Marin on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:15:54 +0200

Reply no.: 58. On 15 Sep 2010, 2:15 PM, Lucian Marin wrote: ]]>

For those of you using InDesign CS4/5 on multiple-page documents in Romanian, here's 2 ways you could do batch find & replace to add romanian glyphs.

Using the Multi-Find/Change plugin, an interface driven script which groups and runs queries previously defined and saved using the regular Find/Change dialog box.
Using ID's own "FindChangeByList" script (to be found in the main menu: Window > Automation > Scripts), which runs template rules defined in a text file (FindChangeList.txt on a PC). Here's a few examples that you would usually run on a document:
text {findWhat:"Romania"} {changeTo:"Rom<00E2>nia"} {}
text {findWhat:"Bucuresti"} {changeTo:"Bucure<0219>ti"} {}
More advanced text & grep rules can be also defined.

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Kit·blog Comments — Alex on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:18:16 +0200

Reply no.: 59. On 4 Oct 2010, 4:18 PM, Alex wrote: ]]>

Wow, this is a really informative discussion, thanks for sharing the results of your research.

I would like to point out a few ideas that others mentioned, but which were not discussed further by the other readers:

Dropping diacritics altogether - originally I thought this was a good idea; after all - English only uses 26 letters, yet they can express a broad range of sounds, at the expense of... WYSIWYGiness (-: (you cannot pronounce what you read, you have to do some post-processing before generating the sound) and word length. The learning curve is shallow in the beginning, but after a period of adaptation, you understand the patterns and you can read words quickly and correctly.
The reason I think it is a bad idea is because Romanian writing is [for obvious reasons] optimized for Romanian words, hence the diacritics. For example words like "țeapă, țeapa, țară; față, fată, fata" would require more complex parsing and spelling rules:
- 'tz' or 'ts' instead of 'ț' forces you to use 2 characters intead of one;
- writing 'a' instead of 'ă' implies that the brain's parser will have to look at the context (neighbor letters, and in the worst case - neighbor words) before it can correctly predict how to pronounce it.

Some languages, such as English, took the "context determines pronounciation" path, while others, such as Romanian, took the "WYSIWYG" path (as long as you know how to read each letter, you can read any word).
My point is that Romanian would do absolutely fine if there were no diacritics; because diacritics are just a convention, as Chuck pointed out. But given that things are as they are, it's easier to keep them (for backwards compatibility reasons).
Language and writing are conventions - there's nothing inherently wrong with one glyph or the other; what matters is that there has to be a standard people can adhere to.
My favourite example is "român vs romîn". A while ago, the other version was considered correct and everyone was happy. Then things got changed, people had to update their parsers. So what? It didn't make the language better or worse, it just made it different.

In the previous point, the conclusion was that Romanian was optimized in the following way: more letters in the alphabet, less letters in words.
In this point the conclusion is different - there are 2 letters for the same sound, hence the alphabet contains some redundancy that adds no value to writing.
Should this be seen as a flaw? If yes - let's get rid of it; if not - then what's wrong with using 'tz' instead of 'ț'?

I think that the highlights should be:

At last, there's a clear standard;
If your system still handles Romanian incorrectly, it is your fault;

Perhaps it is important not to talk about this in terms of 'right' and 'wrong' (it can be a sensitive issue for some), but in terms of conventions. For instance, an adept of "român" should say: "I am not arguing that romîn is inferior to român, because I understand that my spelling option was just an arbitrary choice. Nevertheless, the choice was made, and we have to stick to it". This shifts the focus of the discussion to the real issue, without transforming it into a heated "us vs them" debate.

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Kit·blog Comments — Titi Amzar on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:15:46 +0200

Reply no.: 60. On 1 Feb 2011, 4:15 AM, Titi Amzar wrote: ]]>

Cedilla for the "Ș" and "Ț " does not have its origin in the Turkish language but was taken from Spanish via French. ISO organization and its technical sub-committee has taken a correct decision in 1987. If we used typefaces with cedilla more than 100 years, we had to use them further... Or to give up all diacritics - simply because English does not use them?!...

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Kit·blog Comments — doctorunet on “Romanian diacritic marks”

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:06:53 +0200

Reply no.: 61. On 25 Feb 2011, 12:06 AM, doctorunet wrote: ]]>

Titi, I believe you are right.
If we would have adopted the ISO standard as it was set back in 1987 and 1998 we would've been in a much better situation today and the adoption rate for writing with diacritics could have been much higher. I can't get why so many fuss about cedilla. It was used in our language before, Titu Maiorescu stated in his book "Despre scrierea limbii rumăne" that cedilla should be used for s and t. The use of comma was an error made in printing houses at best (or at worse). I actually suspect it was just a misinterpretation of the glyph and that people mistaken cedilla with comma. It is hard to believe that prior to digitalization fonts were cut with t and s with comma and such characters vanished suddenly with the digitalized versions.

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