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From: huitema@jerry.inria.fr (Christian Huitema)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Latin-1 and the French language
Keywords: ISO 8859-1, Latin-1, french, ligature
Message-ID: <10224@mirsa.inria.fr>
Date: 21 Feb 91 18:06:36 GMT
References: <728@castor.linkoping.telesoft.se> <ENAG.91Feb4001847@holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no> <ENAG.91Feb8023012@holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no> <1941@seti.inria.fr>
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Reply-To: huitema@jerry.inria.fr (Christian Huitema)
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In article <1941@seti.inria.fr>, Philippe.Deschamp@Seti.INRIA.Fr (Philippe
Deschamp) writes:
>    Yes (I should add, IMHO, but somehow cannot :-).  Some words will use
> "oe"
> (two separate letters), some others <oe> (the [in]famous so-called
> ligature).
> Examples: oeil (eye), oeuf (egg), boeuf (ox), oeuvre (work, opus), coeur
> (heart) all use the ligature <oe>, and must be written <oe>il, <oe>uf,
> b<oe>uf,
> <oe>uvre, c<oe>ur, while coefficient, coercition, coexister
> (self-explanatory)
> or boette (a kind of bait) do not use it.
> 
>    Thus this ``ligature'' is different from the "ff", "fi", "ffi" ligatures,
> which are imposed by typographers as soon as the characters occur together:
> I
> write "coefficient", and I want it to appear on paper as "coe<ffi>cient".

Three comments:

1- the <oe> group is really a ligature. Traditional directory sorting request
that
   <oe> be sorted as the group <o> <e>. Representing it by a single character
   would not help much.

2- there is a general rule on "when to apply the ligature", and that is "when
the
   <e> is mute". The ligature shall not be applied if the e is accentuated, or
   marked by a diaresis, or is necessary to "sound" the next letter. That
could
   easily be programmed -- without the help of a dictionnary.

3- moreover, the absence of the ligature has absolutely no impact on 
   prononciation and/or comprehension.

Like many specificities of the French written form, this ligature is much more
a scholastic mark of elegance than an improvement in readibility.  Leaving it
as two characters is, in my opinion, a good idea...

Christian Huitema