Re: maggelish spelling reform (wasRe: english spelling reform)

Christophe Grandsire writes:
 > En réponse à Tim May <butsuri@...>:
 >
 > > Christophe Grandsire writes:
 > >  > En réponse à Muke Tever <mktvr@...>:
 > >  >
 > >  > >
 > >  > > Why is the length stated before the width?
 > >  >
 > >  > Not length stated before width, but longest size stated before
 > > shorter size. A
 > >  > perfectly logical choice to me.
 > >  >
 >
 > My bad. I've just checked, and it *always* smallest size first and bigger size
 > afterwards (i.e. 210x297). But it's always in that order, not dependent on the
 > orientation of the paper. Still, for paper I still find that vertical should go
 > before horizontal (maybe because by convention coordinates on a page are
 > generally taken from the top left hand corner rather than the bottom left...).
 >
 > > But what if it's lined paper, and you wish to specify which way the
 > > lines run?
 >
 > What do you think the terms "landscape" and "portrait" are for? :))
 >
Of course, but my way you save a word.

 > Anyway, have you ever seen landscape oriented lined paper? I've never seen that
 > personally. Lined paper is always portrait as far as I know.
 >
I don't recall seeing any, but I can imagine it, and wouldn't be
surprised to learn that it is available.

 >   You can't specify anything about orientation if the order
 > > is defined by which is longest.  It's ineffecient, unless there's some
 > > advantage I can't see.
 > >
 >
 > The thing is that the biggest majority of the paper sheets sold in the world
 > are unorientated (because they are plain), so what's the point of specifying an
 > order which would find its use for maybe 1% of the cases? Better not even try,
 > since nobody would remember it anyway. So indeed the order is 210x297, but it's
 > not a width-length thing. It's a small figure-big figure thing. My comment
 > still holds, I was just taking it the wrong way round.
 >
Rectangles without any specified orientation can be referred to your
way, if it's really felt that a standard is needed.

Besides, we're measuring a distance here, not a displacement.  And
even if we _were_ measuring the displacement from the top left to
bottom right, that would make the y coordinate negative - I don't see
how it suggests that the order should be reversed.

 > >  >
 > > It may be a stationery thing, but in general I'd give x by y, the same
 > > as I'd give Cartesian grid coordinates.
 >
 > The problem is that Cartesian coordinates in this case often imply a bottom
 > left hand corner origin (to get positive coordinates), while on paper
 > coordinates are usually measured from the top let hand corner.
 >
There's no intrinsic reason why the two standards shouldn't agree, is
there?  It's just an unfortunate difference of convention.  When is
this convention of measuring from the top left of a page used, anyway?
I've never come across it.

Reply