Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!philapd!ssp11!dolf
From: dolf@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Dolf Grunbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: ASCII for national characters
Message-ID: <549@ssp11.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Date: 24 Nov 89 07:36:43 GMT
References: <472@enea.se> <2942@psivax.UUCP> <1083@mountn.dec.com> <540@ssp11.idca.tds.philips.nl> <4318@hemuli.atk.vtt.fi>
Organization: Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems, The Netherlands
Lines: 27

In article <4318@hemuli.atk.vtt.fi> tml@hemuli.atk.vtt.fi (Tor Lillqvist) writes:
-In article <540@ssp11.idca.tds.philips.nl> dolf@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Dolf Grunbauer) writes:
->In article <1083@mountn.dec.com> minow@mountn.dec.com (Martin Minow) writes:
->>Another missing character is the Dutch ij ligature, 
->The 'ij' is *not* a special character in the Dutch language. It is only a
->very common sequence of two characters in our language. We have the
-Well, as Martin Minow said, it is a _ligature_, which means that it is
-perfectly OK to print it as "i" followed by "j", but in quality
-typesetting you should use a specially designed character for the
-combination.  I don't think it is necessary to include the ij ligature
-in Latin-1 or similar character sets.  They don't contain the fi or
-ffi ligatures, either (not to mention kerning information).
I think I misinterpret the meaning of ligature :-). Quality printing will
most of the time use proportional character width so it will automatically
position the "i" and "j" very close to each other. Maybe even "fi" & "ffi"
will be printed quite nice this way.

-The Chicago Manual of Style says that ij should be capitalized as IJ
-(for example: IJsland).  How well is this adhered to by the Dutch?
Completly, this is the way we do it. The funny thing is that the Germans
do it wrong when they talk about our city IJmuiden or lake IJsselmeer,
as they write: Ijmuiden and Ijsselmeer.
-- 
Dolf Grunbauer          Tel: +31 55 433233  Internet dolf@idca.tds.philips.nl
Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems  UUCP ....!mcvax!philapd!dolf
Dept. SSP, P.O. Box 245, 7300 AE Apeldoorn, The Netherlands
           --> Holland is only 1/6 of the Netherlands <--