Talk:Sonneries de la Rose+Croix

Based on Google searches (both text searches and image searches, for instance and pictures of various album covers), it seems the correct title is "Sonneries de la Rose + Croix". That is, a regular "+" sign, not a Unicode superscript plus sign U+207A (which is nondisplayable even in most Unicode fonts) and with spaces before and after the "+" sign.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia cannot have "+" in article titles due to technical limitations, so the usual Wikipedia practice (at C plus plus, Canal Plus, etc) is to spell out "plus" in the article title and use the template.

-- Curps 00:20, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The above technical restriction was removed on January 5 2006. Much of the discussion above and below is thus obsolete. -- Curps 08:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

From User talk:Francis Schonken and User talk:Curps
Please, what is "technically" wrong with Sonneries de la Rose⁺Croix? It is in no single guideline that the ⁺ sign is impossible or even discouraged for article names. Sonneries de la Rose_plus_Croix is not the name of any composition by Erik Satie. I'm not even shure it was a "plus" sign that was intended by the composer. If it were written Sonneries de la Rose&dagger;Croix, I would have chosen that way of writing it, but I'll make that a redirect too. --Francis Schonken 23:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

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The character you use (⁺, Unicode U+207A SUPERSCRIPT PLUS SIGN) is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, as far as I can tell, it's incorrect: based on Google searches, the actual title does seem to be "Sonneries de la Rose + Croix", with a "+" sign, and not "Sonneries de la Rose + Croix". See for instance this image:

Second, this character (superscript plus sign) is not available in most fonts. Under Windows, for instance, this character is not available even in Unicode fonts. In general, there is a strong aversion to using undisplayable characters in article titles.

Unfortunately, due to technical limitation, the "+" sign cannot be used in Wikipedia article titles. The usual Wikipedia convention is to use "plus" in the name of the title and add a template within the article text. There are a number of examples of this: for instance, C_plus_plus instead of C++. See also Canal Plus, 2 Plus 2 = 5, and many other examples.

For this reason, I'm moving the article to Sonneries de la Rose plus Croix with a "wrongtitle" template notice. This matches standard Wikipedia practice. I'll also create redirects from Sonneries de la Rose et Croix, Sonneries de la Rose-Croix, Sonneries de la Rose Croix, since these also occur (though much more rarely) in Google search.

-- Curps 00:05, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

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 * The thing is intringuing. I'm working on my windows machine now, indeed the "superscript +" sign is not visible. So you're right on not being a viable technical solution for the page name. I would like to see this in the guidelines somewhere. Maybe it is somewhere, and I didn't find it; maybe it needs to be inserted somewhere. Could you let me know where it is, or add it where it needs to be added? I'd be really grateful!
 * The really intriguing thing is that Satie probably wrote something like this (I'd like to see the manuscript or the first print, but I'm quite convinced it'd look something like this):


 * Sonneries de la Rose
 * [[Image:Cross templars.gif|15px]]
 * Croix
 * }
 * So the "plus"-like thing is probably a cross (I used the image [[media:Cross templars.gif]] for the above which is cross and not plus - mark that also wikipedia has separate articles); what I'd like to check is whether Satie used a different color (a high chance he did) and whether the four ends of the sticks were broadened the way it is with the image (in that case it would definitely be a "cross" and not a "plus") - I'm nearly a 100% convinced that's what one would find. Satie was very much into medievalistic chivalry and the like when he composed this piece, and as it was Rosicrucian, "crux" (deriving into -crucean) means "cross".
 * I don't know whether you know the "RIZLA+" brand of cigarette paper? That's something similar: the enterpreneur who started that factory had Lacroix ("Thecross") as last name. Then he started making cigarette paper with rice paper, rice being "Riz" in French. The original imprint on this particular type of cigarette paper is something like:


 * RIZ LA
 * [[Image:Cross templars.gif|15px]]
 * }
 * So, RIZ LA, and not RIZ LA (note that a few years ago they "officially" omitted the space between the RIZ and the LA, only then it became RIZLA+ - the last symbol still "croix"/"cross" and not "plus")
 * Nonetheless "Sonneries de la Rose_cross_Croix" would be at least as silly as wikipedia page name I suppose as "Sonneries de la Rose_plus_Croix".
 * In sum, I don't know what would be the "most ideal" solution.
 * Other things regarding the Satie composition:
 * I've found one (but only one) of my recordings of the piece that uses the &dagger; "dagger" symbol in the print on the sleeve;
 * I'm not sure about the spaces before and after the + sign: is it "Sonneries de la Rose+Croix" or "Sonneries de la Rose + Croix"? (did you already google-test that?)
 * I've heard radio speakers say "Sonneries de la Rose-plus-Croix", but as an exception, most say "Sonneries de la Rose-Croix", so there's not so much "evidence" to be found I suppose.
 * --Francis Schonken 08:47, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

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There aren't really any up-to-date guidelines, since the transition to Unicode was quite recent... in the English Wikipedia it wasn't possible to use non-Latin-1 (ASCII and western European) characters in article titles until the end of June, only a couple of months ago (other Wikipedias converted to Unicode much earlier).

In general though, there is still lingering controversy over even having letters with diacritics for article titles, ie Slobodan Milošević rather than Slobodan Milosevic. See for instance the discussion and voting at, although in practice most such names have already been converted to use diacritics. So the mood might be somewhat conservative.

In terms of unusual article titles, we do have I ♥ Huckabees. But the heart symbol is printable in default font on Windows (perhaps on non-Windows machines too). But for other characters that aren't printable in default font, it would probably be reasonable to exclude them from titles (though they could exist as redirects).

Of course, one problem is discovering what's printable in default font on various platforms (Windows, Apple, etc). See Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft) for some Unicode charts... I am now splitting these out into separate templates, as:
 * Template:Unicode chart Latin Extended-A, default font
 * Template:Unicode chart Latin Extended-B, default font
 * Template:Unicode chart Latin Extended Additional, default font
 * etc.

If we can get a good idea of what's default-printable on major platforms, we can try drafting some guidelines.

Unicode has U+2629 CROSS OF JERUSALEM (see http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2600.pdf ) which may be what you're looking for, but it isn't printable in default fonts on Windows (you can try the page at http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/miscellaneous_symbols.html to see if it's printable on your platform).

Also, there's definitely no technical means to use different colors (red) in an article title, although it can be done within the article's text.

If there's a scholarly reference to a cross being intended, we could mention that within the article itself. But this would need to be researched and references cited... your intuition may be good based on your experience and knowledge of the topic, but it doesn't constitute verifiable evidence.

Regarding spaces before and after the "+", I typed this into the google search box: "Sonneries de la Rose" "Croix" in other words, the phrase "Sonneries de la Rose" AND "Croix" together on the same page. Most of the google hits had "+", and I think all of the ones that had "+" had space before and after. You can try the search yourself

-- Curps 10:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

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 * Hi Curps,
 * Thanks for the Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft)-link (and subpages)! That was indeed what I was looking for, and I see a lot of work has gone into it. Note however (now I'm back on my Mandrake/Mozilla machine) that the tables of that main page show no difference between "default font" and "unicode font", so not much use if it's only the tables on which to decide which of the symbols are "usable" and which are not...
 * (side remark:) I use the (code from the) template often, for instance on Koning_Oedipus - but that's of no relevance for page titles
 * Now for Satie's Rosicrucian work:
 * I have been google-testing, and come to the conclusion this is one of these cases where google-test is rather inconclusive. Don't get me wrong: I'm a big defender of intelligent google-testing, but also already remarked several times it does not always lead to a result; in this case searches seem to be biased by the fact that google uses "+" as an operator in search queries and it appears it can not be singled out in a clean way to get reliable results. Admittedly, on first sight there seem to be more cases where the "+" is surrounded by spaces for the Satie composition on English pages. Hundreds of these seem to come from two recent CD's: Excluding "Belfry" (the Bruges Belfry recording) and "Shimada" (the pianist of the other recording) reduced the search results to a few 10 - all in all no "sound" evidence, while for some reason or another Google always lists the pages where the "+" is separated by spaces first. So here's what I'd take as better evidence of the correct way of spelling it:
 * Gillmore (one of of the biographers of Erik Satie, see references on Erik Satie page)
 * Ornella Volta, even more an authority (Erik Satie centre in Paris, see same references)
 * Orledge, another major authority on Satie, responsible for this list on the Erik Satie website:  Since all these authorities write without spaces (also when writing in English), I'd rather be inclined to think that the version without spaces would be the correct one.
 * But that doesn't solve our little problem, does it, only cuts away possibilities to find a "technical" solution that satisfies all...
 * Thinking it all over, since also the cross/plus ambiguity persists (which I don't see to solve in a swiff: I've written Ornella Volta before for guidance on the wikipedia Erik Satie article, but this thing seems comparably minor, and as she's completely a-technical - letters by snail mail or fax - I don't see how she could be of much help) - I somewhere came to think to resolve it best the same way it is solved presently for the RIZLA+ article:
 * RIZLA+: "correct" way of spelling: "RIZLA+"; "+" sign is in fact transliteration of a symbol that can not be used in a wikipedia pagename title: so: wikipedia page name cuts away the symbol (and puts all letters apart from the first in lower case per naming conventions for that matter), so the article title is: "Rizla"
 * Similarly: "Sonneries de la Rose+Croix" is correct, the symbol is "not possible" in wikipedia -> "Sonneries de la Rose Croix" as the pagename where the article is (+ message about technical limitations on top of the article, etc...; all other versions redirects...)
 * Of course I'd be interested to know whether you'd think that a viable solution... --Francis Schonken 12:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

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The "unicode font" is determined by the contents (and sequential ordering of the contents) of Template:Unicode fonts. I didn't write that particular template, it may be that it doesn't include fonts used by Firefox and needs to be refined.

Regarding whether there's a space before and after the "+", well, I'm only going by Google and if you have some original scholarly references, that's probably more reliable.

Regarding the title, the usual Wikipedia practice is to substitute "_plus" for a "+", so the question is, is it worth it to break this convention? In the case of Rizla, our article says that people commonly call it "Rizla" (presumably when talking to shopkeepers, etc). I guess the question is, when music experts and fans talk to one another about this particular piece, how do they pronounce it? I really don't know, perhaps you do? I would guess that, given that it's a French phrase, "Sonneries de la Rose et Croix" might be appropriate; on the other hand, "+" is spelled and pronounced "plus" in French too. Is it really too distateful to include the "plus"?

In any case, I think I'll defer to you as to the choice of the title, since your level of knowledge and scholarship about the man and his work is much greater than mine. Originally, my main concern was simply to avoid having a non-printable character in the article title, so if we can avoid that everything else should be OK. We can just pick one option for the article title and make any other plausible possibility a redirect to it. So go ahead with whatever you consider the best option. -- Curps 07:18, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

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 * Thanks! --Francis Schonken 07:31, 11 September 2005 (UTC)