Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@...> wrote:

> i18n@... wrote:
>> > > So you are referring to the glyphs in particular fonts as opposed to the
>> > > abstract characters themselves?
>> >
>> > What is an "abstract character"?
>>
>> Well, a brief way to describe it (since you mentioned you are not
>> interested in learning about encodings) is "that which is represented by
>> the glyph".
>>
>> E.g. the concept of "the letter A" as opposed to the glyph on a page
>> that represents the letter A.
>>
>> Maybe when you said "The closest we have to real angle brackets in standard
>> fonts is single-guillemets" what you meant was "I consider the glyphs
>> for single-guillemets in standard fonts to be a closer substitute then
>> the glyphs for the less-than/greater-than brackets for the glyphs that
>> are not present for angle brackets"?
>
> What is "the concept of 'the letter A'"?

The underlying A-ness that a user of the Latin alphabet sees in any letter A,
whether the glyph be serif, sans-serif, script, blackletter, illuminated, or
composed of rocks laid out on the beach of a desolate island.

The letter's emic form, which computer encodings purport to encode.

> How is your paraphrase any different, aside from excessive wordiness,
> from what I said?

Apparently the willingness to overload operators is not paralleled by a
willingness to overload technical terminology. ;)

The alternative interpretation of what you said would be that the underlying
form of real angle brackets is closer to the underlying form of single-guillemets
than that of the greater- and less-than signs, which is apparently not what you
meant to say, as this doesn't seem to agree with your stated reasons for preferring
the guillemets.



*Muke!
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