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4:01 PM
@its_me Still not to my tastes.
And you cannot know whether they are tolerable.
 
@tchrist Open Sans, Droid Sans and Droid Serif -- very, very popular
 
Are they OpenType? What is their support for contextual ligatures? How are their kerning tables set up? Are there swash alternates? How many weights? How many different sorts?
 
and they look good on screen.
 
@its_me Crappy looking fonts.
 
@tchrist I think you can download OTF format from fontsquirrel.com -- another resource
 
4:02 PM
Or search for "Fell".
 
@tchrist Tastes differ I guess.
 
It is not enough to say that it is OpenType. It must actually use the OpenType features.
 
Are you on Mac by chance?
 
Of course.
 
@tchrist :)
 
4:03 PM
@its_me I think it will take you a little longer to figure out what you have just done. You have woken the sleeping typographer.
 
Fonts never “look good on screen” unless you have used something like InDesign to set something properly, and from that generate PDF.
The web is shit for typography. Period.
 
@tchrist Agree. I wish the font rendering in Windows was better
 
*were
 
@MετάEd lol! yeah, I did :)
 
Windows makes cretins of them all.
Fix by newfs.
And it doesn’t matter. The web is shit for typography.
 
4:05 PM
@tchrist Thanks for the correction
 
It is more than a matter of font rendering.
 
@tchrist How are you aware of this, despite being on a MAC?
 
Don’t ask questions you do not want to know the answer to. Or at least, do not want to have to endure the answer to.
 
I didn't know how crappy Windows' font rendering was until I checked out Ubuntu
:D
 
Read Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographical Style. That is a barebones primer. You might also consult A Short History of the Printed Word.
Then we can discuss the abomination that “web typesetting” is, and how we just have to put up with this pre-Gutenberg shit that is foisted upon us and called Good. That emperor has no clothes, and I shall have nothing of it.
Gutenberg used tech that was superior to more than 99% of what is out there today.
So we have progressed backwards in five centuries. Enjoy.
Which is why the entire notion of “web fonts” is like putting lipstick on a pig, let alone teaching it to sing.
You will never succeed. All you will manage to do is annoy the pig. And everyone around the poor porker, too.
And no, you cannot read Bringhurst on line. You must get the printed book.
Because anything shy of the PDF proofs does it a disservice, and those are not available.
Had you a week and a day, and a case of tissues to mop up your tears, I could begin to recount the trials and tribulations, the tragedies and calamities, of pretending to try to start to mockup proper typesetting on the Web. Anything less is a mere palimpsest of that presentation.
Until then, try to go easy on the piggies.
@Robusto Witness this.
 
4:29 PM
What's with all the favorites?
 
Passing strange ones, too.
Faved by no one else.
I adjudge it a symptom of some larger disorder.
Or at best, idiosyncrasy.
In short, just another weirdo.
 
user19161
4:41 PM
I see Kit has become a pink square.
 
user19161
@tchrist I suspect he is related to Thursagen. Might be the man himself or someone close.
 
I was not paying attention during T’s reign, so cannot say.
I doubt that it is the same person, because I think our moderation team would have spotted a sufficiently similar MO by now.
But do not take my word for it, nor hunch. I am wrong more often than I am right.
 
@JasonBourne Really? That's all you see when you look at @Kitfox? A pink square? So superficial.
 
Who knows the SEDE query to list the answers whose vote totals are most negative?
That is close, but for accepteds only.
Hm.
Got it.
I wish the first column were wider.
 
5:05 PM
1
A: What did we gain in return for the loss of phonemic vowel length from Old English?

jlovegrenYes, there is a connection between losing one phonemic property and gaining another. Most approaches to phonology conceptualize words as having double lives: on the one hand, they are made of a particular sound sequence which you have to pronounce correctly; on the other hand, the sounds in seque...

WTF??
faceslams
@RegDwighт See above. And weep.
These are not the perspectives you were looking for.
We do not need more treatises on w anton formication.
passes out fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
 
5:29 PM
0
Q: How to use the word "parenthetically"?

gunjan kumarI read a usage of the word as 'Parenthetically, a view has been proposed that ......." Can someone help me understand the usage and what it means when used in such a way. Does it mean "Importantly", or "Apparently"?

Given those two choices, what would you say?
 
I was talking, about the word, and it just happened.
@Robusto imparently because I blame the parents.
 
Aaaand of course Barrie is Johnny-on-the-spot with an answer.
...
_______________
 
Shazam!
 
Elsewhere in the world ...
> Old English transitioned into Middle English in roughly 1066, coinciding with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror, the first Norman king of England.
This is simply not true.
It wasn't as if someone turned a switch and presto, Middle English!
 
I had read that as “began the transition”.
 
5:39 PM
Then you read something that wasn't there.
 
I see that now.
 
The word "starting" would have helped.
 
It was three centuries between Hastings and Sir Gawain.
 
And The Canterbury Tales.
 
@Robusto It's there in the Bayeux Tapestry, a big button marked "Midol Inglish" with William's finger on the button.
 
5:41 PM
Ah, I missed it. It looks like there is an arrow storm going through those letters.
 
@Robusto *the
 
Wevs. I got carried away.
 
Most speakers have a more difficult time with Sir Gawain than they have with Chaucer.
But I do not know that that means one is farther along some arrow of progression. I suspect that is an illusion.
 
Chaucer is mainly opaque to modern students.
 
Then moreso Gawain.
Oct 20 '12 at 0:24, by tchrist
    Siþen þe sege and þe assaut     watz sesed at Troye,
    Þe bor3 brittened and brent     to bronde3 and askez,
    Þe tulk þat þe trammes          of tresoun þer wro3t
    Watz tried for his tricherie,   þe trewest on erþe:
    Hit watz Ennias þe athel,       and his highe kynde,
    Þat siþen depreced prouinces,   and patrounes bicome
    Welne3e of al þe wele           in þe west iles.
    Fro riche Romulus to Rome       ricchis hym swyþe,
    With gret bobbaunce þat bur3e   he biges vpon fyrst,
Oct 20 '12 at 0:25, by tchrist
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
Compare.
 
5:47 PM
Someone ought to mention Piers Plowman at this point.
@tchrist *Aprille
 
’Tis of an age with the other twain.
Yes, I see that.
I can render Chaucer into modern English. Usually. Gawain, not so much.
 
Gawain is much more in the Anglo-Saxon tradition.
 
I think the problem is also that the vocabulary is not that of southeast England, but from an area that did not grow into what we now call Modern English.
So more of the words sound Beowulfishly foreign.
But it is still full of French.
Oct 20 '12 at 0:24, by tchrist
    When the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy,
    and the fortress fell in flame to firebrands and ashes,
    the traitor who the contrivance of treason there fashioned
    was tried for his treachery, the most true upon earth--
    it was Æneas the noble and his renowned kindred
    who then laid under them lands, and lords became
    of well-nigh all the wealth in the Western Isles.
    When royal Romulus to Rome his road had taken,
    in great pomp and pride. he peopled it first,
    and named it with his own name that yet now it bears;
That is one of the few translations that manages to preserve any of the Anglo-Saxon-ness, with its alliteration.
Notice Æneas clearly stresses on the N.
 
@tchrist As opposed to ...?
@JohnLawler: A dictionary would still be a good start. For one thing, it would have led the OP away from importantly and apparently. The rest could probably have been deduced. I can envision a question on this particular topic, but this isn't it. — Robusto 2 mins ago
 
@Robusto Anal, Anus, Anius. I have heard it. I haven’t liked it.
 
5:59 PM
I'm being serious. Where else would you stress that? Because the double n could mean to stress it either on the first syllable or the second.
 
I have heard it said AE-neas.
I do not like it that way.
They try to impose the Romulus stress-pattern on it.
 
So ... second syllable.
 
Huh?
No.
What are you thinking?
 
It's not clear to me what you are saying.
 
Romulus is ROMulus not roMUlus.
It has three syllables, stressed on the first.
They try to do that with Aeneas.
Bothers me.
 
6:03 PM
Oh, you're talking about the translation. I thought you were talking about the original.
 
ae-ne-as has those three syllables. The second should be stressed, not the first.
Yes, that is right.
But Ennias has to be stressed on the N, also.
Er, wrong.
> Hit watz Ennias þe athel, and his highe kynde,
The three stressed syllables with same starting consonant are Ennias, athel, highe.
So Ennias must be stressed on the first syllable, just as Aeneas must be on the second. Otherwise the alliteration does not work.
Pretty sure H alliterates as a vowel, that is, as not a consonant. Might be wrong though.
 
OK.
 
Hi.
 
Hullo.
 
AE-neas sounds a bit odd.
 
6:15 PM
You know, maybe the alliteration in the MidE is different from what I had thought.
You need to find the two stressed syllables in the first half with the same consonant, then one but not two in the second half.
 
Sounds heinous.
 
The only two same-consonant stressed syllable possibilities seem to be the vowels.
Hit and his are not going to be stressed anyway.
So, @Cerb, does the Gawain sound like Dutch to you? :)
 
@tchrist You're probably reading more OE into it than exists. I see Gawain as having a foot (no pun intended) in both eras.
 
Maybe.
Certainly I am applying a Beowulf-type reading of the feet.
The Gawain poet does go all Chaucer on you in the Wheel, though.
 
@tchrist I don't know, not that much.
 
6:21 PM
I only asked because you said older English sounds Dutch to you. :)
 
Yeah.
But so many words are spelled in odd ways that it is hard for me to "feel" the text.
 
Well, not “all Chaucer”. He just adds meter and rhyme, but for the most part still alliterates. Tough job.
 
And it's poetry.
 
Yeah.
Of sum auenturus þyng . .  an uncouþe tale,
of some adventuring matter . .  a strange tale
Of sum mayn meruayle, . .  þat he my3t trawe,
of some great marvel . .  which he might believe,
Of alderes, of armes, . .  of oþer auenturus,
of ancestors, of arms,  . .  of other adventures;
Oþer sum segg hym biso3t  . .  of sum siker kny3t
or [until] some man sought from him  . .  a trusty knight
To joyne wyth hym in iustyng, . .  in jopardé to lay,
to join with him in jousting, . .  to take a gamble,
Lede, lif for lyf, . .  leue vchon oþer,
They could have kept uncouth and trow, I trow.
For vneþe watz þe noyce . .  not a whyle sesed,
For barely was the noise . .  over for a moment,
And þe fyrst cource in þe court . .  kyndely serued,
and the first course in the court . .  appropriately served
Þer hales in at þe halle dor . .  an aghlich mayster,
[when] there comes in at the hall-door . .  a fearsome lord,
On þe most on þe molde . .  on mesure hyghe;
the very most on the earth . .  in stature high
Fro þe swyre to þe swange . .  so sware and so þik,
from the neck to the girdle . .  so well-built and stout,
An aglitch master? Hm.
Ugly?
@Cerb Have you seen what your friend has been doing?
AFKBBLs
 
@tchrist See?
He can describe a complicated linguistic phenomenon intelligibly and without casually inserting controversial terms and obscure abbreviations everywhere.
 
6:39 PM
@tchrist Ok, kerning problem fixed. I was wondering about the background... Earlier it was of the darker one, now it's the lighter one.
Ok I changed my mind. Fixed.
 
Hi.
Australian dust storm.
 
wowza. that looks inexplicable
 
Wowza?
 
7:03 PM
Odd colours, huh?
Wowza = wowsers, I presume.
An expression of surprise, awe, when something startles you.
 
user19161
7:35 PM
@MattЭллен Any news from the OED folks?
 
the blank message was a glitch in their auto-reply system. Otherwise, nope!
 
user19161
First, I infected this room with QED. Then, I infected this room with coloured squares. I am so proud!
 
user19161
Hello @trig! I see you are here again today!
 
@JasonBourne Well, sort of.
Hands are too cold to type, really. And I'm not going to turn on the heating in this house, because I'm leaving it soon to spend the night in my other house.
(I'm currently house-sitting in two different houses, spending different nights in each one. It gets complicated, especially when I have to keep the cats fed, and fill bird feeders at each house too.)
 
user19161
@TRiG You are very lucky to live in two houses. Some people have none.
 
7:51 PM
Also, people are back from long holidays soon, so I've been looking for somewhere new to move to when I'm no longer house-sitting. I've found one, and paid the first instalment of my deposit, so now I have three houses to worry about.
 
8:04 PM
@JasonBourne all our avatars should be coordinated to give a rainbow when we visit
 
user19161
@Mitch Wanna change into a coloured square too?
 
I immodestly think I am already a rainbow.
my avatar that is.
@JasonBourne did you see my mathy response? I'm not sure it was accurate; analysis is not my specialty.
 
user19161
@Mitch Me? I have forgotten all my math! You shouldn't ask me!
 
also, did things work out with you and the older woman?
@JasonBourne all?
 
user19161
@Mitch Haha, you have assumed it is me. Well, OK I confess it is me. I thought the age gap was too big, so end of story.
 
8:15 PM
!!
 
user19161
@Mitch Note that the actual numbers were changed slightly...
 
You have to make your own decisions. Advice can be misleading/
 
user19161
@Mitch Yes, I make my own decisions all the time. But I also like to listen to opinions of others. They are two different things.
 
Forgetting actual advice, whenever someone asks advice about a 'friend' it is often the asker. (people think they are being sly by misdirection, but it is often very transparent).
 
user19161
@Mitch Yes, I know. I wasn't trying to keep it a top secret. Also, often when I mention friend in this room, it really is not me. In this case, I didn't use friend, I just gave the situation as it is. Because I don't do lies, remember?
 
8:22 PM
No, I don't remember. But also, a story isn't a lie...necessarily.
 
user19161
@Mitch Of course, sometimes I have my moments of weakness and tell a lie, but there are very few such incidents in my life.
 
like white lies?
Sometimes telling the truth is just hurtful.
"Isn't my baby beautiful?" "Why of course! He has an an uncanny resemblance to mix between Ernest Borgnine and Winston Churchill"
 
user19161
@Mitch There is a difference between saying something that is not true and saying something that is true in a nice way.
 
user19161
One can tell the truth and not hurt people at the same time.
 
"YOu are ugly" vs "You have a great face for radio"
Isn't it a bit late for you?
it's too "middle of the afternoon" for me. which implies that I should go.
later
 
user19161
8:33 PM
@Mitch Go.
 
8:59 PM
@Cerberus Um, pretty sure not. I presume @MattЭллен’s wowza to be a wowed variant on the exclamatory yowza, and so never contained an r of any sort.
 
9:28 PM
@Mitch A fabulation presented as literal fact is certainly a lie.
This is the answer with the lowest total votes on SO:
-43
A: Rhino Mocks, TypeMock, Moq, or NMock? Which one do you use and why?

Jonathan AllenI don't. When unit testing, I prefer to test the real code and not just some imaginary scaffolding. If I really, really need to mock something out, then I use conditional compilation. Just wrap a #If around each version of the class and away you go. EDIT in response to questions: How do yo...

It has no delete votes, and I do not intend to award it any. I just find it interesting that it seems to have elicited a zealot’s reaction in so many people.
It has 51 downvotes and 8 upvotes.
That is almost kinda impressive.
As expected, a lot of these massively downvoted postings are on locked questions.
-31
A: What is your best programmer joke?

user210555Here is a good (original) one: To all you CS masters, do you think that in Middle Earth, there is not only a Frodo Bugging, but also a Frodo Debugging ... (I conceived this one after 10 hours GDB-ing...)

This one should have had a zillion upvotes, but instead, it got beaten down by the WinWinWinWinWienies:
Actually, it did get 41 upvotes. It also got 70 downvotes before it was locked, freezing it at -29.
I am surprised that there are so many super-negatively downvotes answers. Don’t their owners realize that these attract passive reputation loss?
This person ignored two correct answers, answered it herself, and then gave herself the check mark. This one merits two more deleted votes, all you 10k users:
-29
A: How do I stop a page from unloading (navigating away) in JS?

Natalie DowneThanks everyone, looks like it was indeed the onbeforeunload event we were after, its not entirely cross browser but it works in Firefox 3+ and Safari and all IE not Opera or Camino though, I don't think it is a standard event. Looks like it was implemented by IE and adopted by Mozilla and Safari...

Yes, we can delete accepted answers with three votes, although moderators very very seldom do so themselves with a single-vote fiat.
Hee. I did a copyedit to fix the formatting. That will bump it up into the active list again. Maybe people will notice it and kill it.
It does have 16 up and 45 though. Wonder where those 16 up come from. Probably people who don’t notice, or don’t care about, the breach of protocol.
Sigh. I want to ask a question with a clever title, but I know Fumble will downding me just out of general principle for trying to be funny.
 
9:55 PM
@tchrist Perhaps not. But we say wowsers (pronounced with a z).
 
Which we is that?
I almost think I have heard it. Not sure.
 
Dutchmen.
And womanz too!
 
Teens, you mean? :)
It sounds kinda teeny to my tinny ear.
 
Yeah.
I think we used to say it in the 90s.
It may have fallen out of fashion.
 
I can believe it is from 90s teen slang. It may well be just as English as Dutch. I could not say.
I mean, it does seem half-familiar to me, and I have no Dutch.
 

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