Re: CHAT: browsers

En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:

>
> How do you know it wasn't a hardware problem?
Because the hardware had been checked (those people I'm talking about are
professionals, not amateurs like me).

 I think WinXP is much
> more
> able to detect and crash with dodgy RAM than earlier versions of
> Windows.
But the RAM they had, at least in the examples I have, was working perfectly
correctly.

 At least, that's what I've heard. I hardly use Windows so I'm
> not speaking from experience.
>
It may be true, but doesn't apply here.

>
> Others have confirmed what I've thought: your use of 'largely fit' is
> wrong. I've *never* heard it mean fitting with plenty of space. In
> this
> context, 'largely' means 'mostly'. Don't be fooled by -ly, it's not
> always transparent: are you hardly working or hard-working?
>
Then it's really strange, because I've seen it used the way I used it, read it
too like that, and at the end learned it this way. But I'll be careful for next
time.

>
> Actually, you haven't proven anything other than that when I use it, I
> generally define myself before they ask me what I mean. I could define
> myself every time I said 'frog', but that wouldn't mean that no-one
> but
> me knew what 'frog' meant.
>
But they would certainly react that you don't need to define it. I would. I
doubt they react this way when you define what a kibi- is. On the contrary, I'm
quite sure the people you're talking to react saying that they never heard of
it before.

>
> I was thinking of a cricket bat, actually.
I know you did. I was making a *joke*.

 And no, that has nothing to
> do with crickets, cicadas, or any other small green animal you could
> care to name.
>
Really? I thought cricket bats were used only to kill crickets (this
alleged "sports" called cricket is really just a hoax to make the rest of the
world believe the Commonwealth is holding true sports competitions ;))) ).

And before you react, *yes*! I know there is a sports called "cricket". I even
played it once (we had a nice sports teacher at school, he made us try plenty
of different sports). Not that I remember the rules anymore though ;)) .

>
> At one stage, I ran
>         # emerge rox-filer
> which installed (as dependencies of ROX-Filer), among other things,
> gtk2
> and xft. Xft takes care of font anti-aliasing, and rather well, I
> should
> add.
>
Unfortunately I cannot do those things here. The Red Hat distribution I have at
work doesn't allow me much (after all, I'm just a user, and the administrator
is busier making the scientific software work correctly and taking care of the
network than making it all look good).

>
> Obviously how you'll do it depends on your distro (that works for
> Gentoo
> and that's about it). I'm not sure that you can get precompiled
> versions
> of Mozilla with XFT enabled, but I'd be suprised if you couldn't. You
> *can* get precompiled XFT-enabled versions of Phoenix, though.
>
But what's the use of them: I cannot install them...

>
> Well, it's happened before. Anything within the last four years often
> seems like yesterday. Give it a month and that'll be whiped clean,
> though, I imagine, given that I'll've started at University and
> everything'll be different.
>
Hehe. Indeed, in that case I understand what you mean. I had the same when I
moved from Rouen to Paris :) .

>
> So long as you spell litre 'liter', they would be. Most other US
> spellings get produced by normal people, but never 'liter', because it
> spells /lait@/.
>
Well, I'll be careful. But "litre" looks so French to me that I tend to
write "liter" because I'm afraid I'm making a mistake (and except
for "diphtongue", which I keep writing the French way for fun - and because I
can never remember how to spell the English word ;)) -, I'm not keen on making
spelling mistakes).

>
> I must say, though, that I'm apalled. Hope to it already!
>
Just be patient ;)) .

>
> I'm honestly surprised. I don't thing English-speakers would settle
> for
> someone telling them how to spell.
>
Well, you write the way you're taught and the way you see it written.
Commercials follow the official spelling because they have to (what's the point
of an official spelling otherwise? ;))) ), children are taught the official
spelling, and sometimes ask their parents to help them with their homework, so
even adults pick up the reformed spelling (which is very close to the former
one anyway that most people don't see the difference). And anyway, the MS Word
spellchecker follows the last orthographic reform, so people naturally correct
their mistakes (rare are people like me who refuse to do it for aesthetic
reasons. Most people don't care). As for really different things like the "mél"
spelling for "mail", as I said, it has been accepted only because it made for a
nice parallel with "tél", which made nice-looking business cards. If it had
been anything else, it wouldn't have been accepted (and mind you, it's only a
*proposed* spelling. "mail" is still allowed).

>
> Hmm... Bad Victorian Education System, then. Very bad!
>
Indeed...

>
> Doesn't alter the fact that they don't use capitals, though.
> (Actually,
> you'd be lucky to get something like 'km/h' or 'km' in an SMS; the
> things are called 'kay(s)' (spelt 'k') in colloquial speech.
> /k@lOm@t@/
> is much too long. (Likewise, kilograms tend to be kilos; you'd never
> ask
> for a kilogram of mince. And if you call that lazy, I understand the
> French still use pounds...).)
>
You understand wrong. I never heard a French person using the word "livre" for
weight. Even babies, who were traditionally weighed in "pounds" of 500g, have
been weighed in kilograms since before my birth (even my grandparents rarely,
if ever, use the word "livre" for weight, and they are both 80 years old).

>
> When correctness counts, in an exam for instance, they'd get them
> right.
> But labelling a bottle, who cares if it says 600 ml, 600 mL or 600 ML?
> (At least with litres, no-one would be deluded enough to think that a
> bottle would fit 600 megalitres...)
>
LOL. Indeed not ;)) . Still, if here it's done correctly, why can't it be
anywhere else? We're not so much less lazy than you!

> (On a side note, though both l and L are correct for litres, L is the
> normal one used here (even in mL),
Here too, it's the official form. 'l' is only an accepted variant (despite what
John says. I know what the official form is and it's definitely 'L').

 and has the greater perception of
> 'correctness', but the GNU units program doesn't seem to accept it...
Strange...

> It's almost like the way the MS Australian spellchecker accepts both
> 'organise' and 'organize' (which is perceived as wrong, but accepted),
> but only 'organization'... Stupid multinationals.)
>
:))) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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