Re: CHAT: browsers

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> > English, of course, has no official spelling anywhere.  Its various
> > orthographies are locked in by Hartree-Fock processes.
> >
>
> Hartree-Fock?
Hartree-Fock approximation is a method of computing electron orbitals:
see http://www.shodor.org/chemviz/overview/hfa.html .  In this case,
I mean that publishers use dictionaries to determine the current
orthography, and dictionaries draw on the output of previous publishers.
*The* orthography becomes a fixed point of this recursion, and the
reason there are multiple English orthographies is that until recently
these publisher/lexicographer groups operated fairly independently.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_