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

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? :))

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.

  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.

>  >
> 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.

  But I have to say, I don't
> know how paper sizes are normally referred to (other than by A
> numbers, etc).
>
They are probably there so that people don't discuss about which size should go
first :))) .

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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