Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft)

Greek in article titles
So why's Greek OK at all in article titles? This *is* the en Wikipedia, after all. Why's Greek even mentioned here? After all, en articles have always been using all of Unicode anyway, independent of the recent move. Ambarish 29 June 2005 06:04 (UTC)
 * i just pulled up a few ranges that looked interesting to discuss the possible use of don't read too much into them. Plugwash 2 July 2005 00:59 (UTC)


 * I think the question is relevant. My (English) maths textbooks have headlines like Γ function and χ² distribution. We should at least discuss if those wouldn't be the proper titles for Gamma function and Chi-squared distribution. Arbor 6 July 2005 13:09 (UTC)

Subs/Supers
I already know of one instance where a sub is used: (99942) 2004 MN₄. --cesarb 2 July 2005 00:24 (UTC)
 * it probablly is ok in that particular case. conventions are made to be bent/broken sometimes. Afaict the sub/superscript numbers are pretty safe support for other parts of that range doesn't seem so good though. Plugwash 2 July 2005 00:59 (UTC)
 * hmm on second thoughts my vanilla IE on win98 setup doesn't support the stuff in that section at all. IE on my main box seems to get the superscript 4 and n and the subscript 1,2,3 and 4 but nothing else. Firefox on my main box gets all the numbers and symbols and the superscript n but none of the subscript letters.
 * p.s. superscript 1 2 and 3 are not in that range they are in LATIN1 and presumablly very well supported. Plugwash 2 July 2005 01:05 (UTC)
 * On my Windows XP SP2, some subscripts (such as 6) don't show up. The ones that do have annoying spaces when more than one subscript is used, that is 2000 SG₃₄₄  comes out looking more like:

2000 SG          3  4  4
 * rather than

2000 SG          344
 * or 2000 SG344
 * -- Curps 15:10, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Older discussion:

See also: Talk:2003 EL61

--cesarb 17:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

“Curly” apostrophes
Some weeks ago I started a debate on WP:MoS, targeting the current semi-policy of only allowing straight quotation marks and apostrophes. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Quotation marks and apostrophes).

(I am very much opposed to the “straight quotes only” policy, because Wikipedia Is Not A Typewriter; and think WP should follow other Wikipedias and its own dash policy by allowing “curlies”. If you have anything to add to that discussion, please do so.)

The debate is tangentially relevant to the present page mainly because of apostrophes, which are a common character in English because of the way English form possessives. The linked page tries to identify technical problems with allowing proper apostrophes in titles (and I set up a number of test cases on the MW 1.5 test site), and no problems were reported.

Besides the technical issues (of which there are none as far as I can see) there is a policy issue relating to the WP:MoS but also to naming conventions. Specifically, should Mother's day be moved to Mother’s day? (I certainly think so, the former looks horrid to the typographically trained eye.)

Note that on a windows box, with the standard font and size, the two characters ' and ’ look the same. On a Mac there is a subtle difference, and in page titles the difference would be very visible because of the font size. Arbor 6 July 2005 12:04 (UTC)
 * Generally i can't see curved quotes gaining much favour unless the software does to automatically its just too much of a pain to type them etc and as you say on windows boxes makes no difference at body text font sizes. Plugwash 01:09, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I would favour a proposal to have Mediawiki support for this, just as we have it for dashes. I agree that there is little chance for a “curlies only” policy, especially in body text. The question (on this page) is if curlies and apostrophes should be forbidden, with special attention to their appearance in titles. Arbor 08:06, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

suggestion
I would suggest that article titles of names should use transliteration, if possible restricted to the ascii (letters), Latin1 and Latin Extended ranges (no combining diacritics if at all possible). Greek and Hebrew letters should be permissible when they are symbols (like in χ² distribution, so yes, I do think Chi-squared distribution should be moved there), or when the article is about the character itself (ב, @ (ascii, but not a letter)). But policy should be that every article with a title including non-ascii characters should have at least one redirect with an ascii title (e.g. Beth (letter) redirecting to ב). Sometimes, we just need some common good judgement. Fe (rune) will be at ᚠ some day, but since hardly any browsers can render ᚠ as of now, it is better to wait with the move. dab (&#5839;) 08:12, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I think most of that makes sense, even though I'm strongly in favour of allowing all diacritics for languages or transliterations which usually employ diacritics (Japanese macrons, Azerbaijani schwa, ...) &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 12:50, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Typography - Unicode
FYI, I've started a page at WikiProject Typography/Unicode which may be of interest to people watching this page. — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:41, 22 June 2009 (UTC)