English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@KitFox I just advertised for you on SU chat. Hope you don't mind.

!!summon 26

@terdon Oh! Thank you!

So Gilles said I had three more hours.

I thought the time was past already.

passed?

Weird, I can't parse that.

1:09 AM

whore for views can't be bad imo, post in C# & javascript now

whore for votes is !cool

@KitFox it's 1am, your question was posted at 4:30am

@JohanLarsson That might have made the difference in C++.

I need 6 views. I can do that myself.

@Gilles So it's 48 hour period then, not two days?

@KitFox if it's two calendar days, it's too late for day-before-yesterday+yesterday, you'll have to hope for yesterday+today

thinks

I don't know anymore!

Hat-whore needs views, click, click, click

in C# on Stack Overflow Chat, 12 secs ago, by Johan Larsson

1:12 AM

Eep!

RegDwigнt

There you go.

Just pushed you to 501.

Now I'm off to bed.

Yay! Thank you!

Night all!

Guten abent!

U&L chat is turning into the incomprehensible room by the minute

1:15 AM

aww, coming here to complain?

@terdon nobody's complaining

No, can't be! @Reg has gone to bed.

@Gilles I know, especially since a lot of the incomprehensibility comes from you :)

@JohanLarsson did you find an official name for those angle brackets < >?

nope and I will not trust anybody but tchrist :)

1:23 AM

Guillamettes?

:)

@KitFox hmm, maybe, not sure about the singular

!!wiki guillamettes

@KitFox No result found

Damn. I'm not spelling it properly.

And anyway, they are angle brackets.

1:25 AM

Guillemet

Guillemets (, or , French: ), also called angle quotes or French quotation marks, are polylines, pointed as if arrows (« or »), sometimes forming a complementary set of punctuation marks used as a form of quotation mark. The symbol at either end—double « and » or single ‹ and ›—is a guillemet. They are used in a number of languages to indicate speech. They resemble the symbols for lesser than (), and for left and right bit shifts in some programming languages, as well as rewind and fast forward on various media players, such as VCRs, DVD players, and MP3 players. Etymology The word is a...

!!wiki bracket

Bracket

{{Punctuation marks|[ ]|Brackets|variant1=( )|caption1=Parentheses|variant2={ }|caption2=Braces or curly brackets|variant3=|caption3=Chevrons or angle brackets}} Brackets are tall punctuation marks used in matched pairs within text, to set apart or interject other text. Used unqualified, brackets refer to different types of brackets in different parts of the world and in different contexts. List of types * ( ) — parentheses, brackets (UK, New Zealand, and Australia), parens, round brackets, soft brackets, or circle brackets * [ ] — square brackets, c...

@skullpatrol which one? <> are less than and greater than. ‹› are single guillemets or single angle quotation marks. ⟨⟩ are angle brackets.

Both < and >

In math they are inequality symbols :)

Are angle brackets used in any language? Apart from programming or math I mean.

1:33 AM

French uses them as quotation marks sometimes.

In editing and papyrology, they are also used.

@Cerberus really? I've only seen the « and », not ⟨⟩

In French I mean. Wouldn't have a clue about papyrology.

!!wiki papyrology

Papyrology

Papyrology is the study of ancient literature, correspondence, legal archives, etc., as preserved in manuscripts written on papyrus, the most common form of writing material in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Papyrology includes both the translation and interpretation of ancient documents in a variety of languages and the care and preservation of rare papyrus originals. Papyrology as a systematic discipline dates from the 1890s, when large caches of well-preserved papyri were discovered by archaeologists in several locations in Egypt, such as Crocodilopolis (Arsinoe) ...

@terdon I believe I have seen single ones.

I understood what the word meant (though I assumed it was more on Egypt and Greece than Rome) but how are the guillemets used there?

1:35 AM

Smaller than <>, though.

@Cerberus ah, yes, see Gilles post above

Hmm where?

9 mins ago, by Gilles

@skullpatrol which one? <> are less than and greater than. ‹› are single guillemets or single angle quotation marks. ⟨⟩ are angle brackets.

That's where I've been copy/pasting them from

I'm wondering where ⟨⟩ are used

@terdon <> are used to mark something that is clearly not in the manuscript but that really ought to be, like an omitted word.

I think.

I'd have to look it up to be sure.

Nah, just idle curiosity. Happy new year by the way!

1:38 AM

Heh.

You too!

@terdon math

9 mins ago, by terdon

Are angle brackets used in any language? Apart from programming or math I mean.

:)

$ unicode ⟨⟩
U+27E8 MATHEMATICAL LEFT ANGLE BRACKET
UTF-8: e2 9f a8 UTF-16BE: 27e8 Decimal: ⟨
⟨
Category: Ps (Punctuation, Open)
Bidi: ON (Other Neutrals)
Character is mirrored

U+27E9 MATHEMATICAL RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET
UTF-8: e2 9f a9 UTF-16BE: 27e9 Decimal: ⟩
⟩
Category: Pe (Punctuation, Close)
Bidi: ON (Other Neutrals)
Character is mirrored

That would suggest they are exclusively found in math then.

Not to mention the less than or equal to

1:41 AM

Yeah, but those are different

> Chevron-like symbols are part of standard Chinese, and Korean punctuation

@terdon It also kind of depends on how exact you want to be: the various characters that look somewhat like < but are shorter or more obtuse probably officially have different functions, but many people will substitute one for another...

From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

@Gilles So does French ever use single guillemettes / angle brackets for quotation? I think it does?

@Cerberus oh absolutely, I wasn't even aware of the difference before reading @Gilles's post and seeing them next to each other.

Right!

1:43 AM

@Cerberus did ancient Greek use << and >> for quotes? Modern Greek does.

@Cerberus No, only « this », and sometimes « nested quotes “like this” »

@terdon Nope. The farther you go back, the less punctuation people used, and the less consistently.

it's German that can do »this« or ›this‹ or „this“

@Gilles Hmm...I could have sworn I saw singles in this edition of Stendhal...perhaps I am mixing up memories.

@Cerberus maybe a Swiss edition

1:44 AM

@Gilles Ohh perhaps it was German, then.

@Gilles »this«? Not « this »? They're pointing outwards?

By the way, that last German quotation looks wrong?

@Gilles It should be „quotation”?

@terdon Yeah I've seen that too, pointing outwards.

Huh.

All kinds can be seen in Dutch editions. Literally everything mentioned here.

But in modern times "quotation" (or, more properly, “quotation”) has become somewhat standard.

@Gilles no, the Swiss use «French guillemets» but without a space

@Cerberus hmm, maybe

@terdon »this« is German. « this » is French.

the guillemets point outwards in French, like parentheses

I have no idea why the Germans do it backwards

1:48 AM

$ unichars -gs '\p{Quotation Mark}'
U+0022 ‭ "  GC=Po SC=Common       QUOTATION MARK
U+0027 ‭ '  GC=Po SC=Common       APOSTROPHE
U+00AB ‭ «  GC=Pi SC=Common       LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK
U+00BB ‭ »  GC=Pf SC=Common       RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK
U+2018 ‭ ‘  GC=Pi SC=Common       LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
U+2019 ‭ ’  GC=Pf SC=Common       RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
U+201A ‭ ‚  GC=Ps SC=Common       SINGLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK
U+201B ‭ ‛  GC=Pi SC=Common       SINGLE HIGH-REVERSED-9 QUOTATION MARK

@Gilles sorry, the one I found surprising was the German one. Greek uses the same style as French.

@Gilles Because they are crazy, clearly.

They do it to be opposite?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Hey, happy new year. Bets on if my sardines will get me a hat?

why sad?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

1:50 AM

Sad?

nvm reado (sardines)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Ah.

Time to go, the mall's closing

Vote here if you haven't yet

2:04 AM

Hai und bai!

2:21 AM

The review queue is getting long enough to repel down, and this one is even worse. Too much hat-chasing?

@RegDwigнt As it happens, I indeed had. Everybody else was, and I was feeling a bit left out.

@JohanLarsson Most people call it a greater-than sign in a mathematical context, and a right angle bracket if paired with a a left. However, this confuses matter because there are other code points for that.

Why use the word "right" with the name "right angle bracket "? @tchrist

2:37 AM

‭ >  003E       GREATER-THAN SIGN
        x (single right-pointing angle quotation mark - 203A)
        x (right-pointing angle bracket - 232A)
        x (mathematical right angle bracket - 27E9)
        x (right angle bracket - 3009)

‭ ›  203A       SINGLE RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK
        = right pointing single guillemet
        * usually closing, sometimes opening
        x (greater-than sign - 003E)
        x (right-pointing angle bracket - 232A)
        x (right angle bracket - 3009)

@skullpatrol To distinguish it from its mirror.

If you can’t find the one you’d like amongst those, than you are a hard man to please. :)

Ic Ic I was thinking of the 90 degree right angle @tchrist

It is there. :)

-› » ⧽ ⦒ ⦔ ⦕ ⟩ ⟫ ❭ ❯ ❱ 〉〉﹀》︾ ‣ ⸀ ⸁ ⸖ ꜚ > ≯ ﹥ ＞ ∟ ≥ ≱ ≧ ≩ ≫ ≳ ≵ ≶ ≸ ≷ ≹ ⊾ ⊿ ⋗ ⋙ ⋚ ⋛ ⋝ ⋧ ⌜ ⍄ ⍩ ⍼ ⏩ ⏭ ⏯ ▶ ▷ ▸ ▹ ◢ ◥ ◹ ◺ ◿ ⥷ ⥸ ⦜ ⦝ ⧁ ⧎ ⧐ ⧩ ⨠ ⩺ ⩼ ⩾ ⪀ ⪂ ⪄ ⪆ ⪈ ⪊ ⪋ ⪌ ⪎ ⪏ ⪐ ⪑ ⪒ ⪓ ⪔ ⪖ ⪘ ⪚ ⪜ ⪞ ⪠ ⪢ ⪤ ⪥ ⪧ ⪩ ⫸ ⫺ ⭃

-› » ⧽ ⦒ ⦔ ⦕ ⟩ ⟫ ❭ ❯ ❱ 〉 〉 ﹀ 》 ︾ ‣ ⸀ ⸁ ⸖ ꜚ > ≯ ﹥ ＞ ∟ ≥ ≱ ≧ ≩ ≫ ≳ ≵ ≶ ≸ ≷ ≹ ⊾ ⊿ ⋗ ⋙ ⋚ ⋛ ⋝ ⋧ ⌜ ⍄ ⍩ ⍼ ⏩ ⏭ ⏯ ▶ ▷ ▸ ▹ ◢ ◥ ◹ ◺ ◿ ⥷ ⥸ ⦜ ⦝ ⧁ ⧎ ⧐ ⧩ ⨠ ⩺ ⩼ ⩾ ⪀ ⪂ ⪄ ⪆ ⪈ ⪊ ⪋ ⪌ ⪎ ⪏ ⪐ ⪑ ⪒ ⪓ ⪔ ⪖ ⪘ ⪚ ⪜ ⪞ ⪠ ⪢ ⪤ ⪥ ⪧ ⪩ ⫸ ⫺ ⭃

Aren’t those swell?

Yep :-)

WOW!!! O-:

(Just clicked full text)

Oddly, one of these four is a wide character:

$ uniprops -a '>' '›' '〉' '⟩'

U+003E ‹>› \N{GREATER-THAN SIGN}
    \pS \p{Sm}
    All Any ASCII Assigned Basic_Latin Bidi_M Bidi_Mirrored BidiM Common Zyyy Sm S Gr_Base Grapheme_Base Graph GrBase Math Math_Symbol
       Pat_Syn Pattern_Syntax PatSyn POSIX_Graph POSIX_Print POSIX_Punct Print Symbol X_POSIX_Graph X_POSIX_Print X_POSIX_Punct
    Age=1.1 Block=Basic_Latin Bidi_Class=ON Bidi_Class=Other_Neutral BC=ON Block=ASCII BLK=ASCII Canonical_Combining_Class=0
       Canonical_Combining_Class=Not_Reordered CCC=NR Canonical_Combining_Class=NR Script=Common Decomposition_Type=None DT=None

It’s the third one, as you see. Strange.

One is a Math Symbol, two is Final Punctuation, and three and four are End Punctuation. Whatever that all means. Look at the detailed character properties for other distinctions.

2:57 AM

@johanlarsson will be pleased

Or stunned.

I suppose I should have done those in a narrower window to avoid unsightly wrapping.

Maybe a little of both :-)

macbook# uniprops -a '>' '›' '〉' '⟩'
U+003E ‹>› \N{GREATER-THAN SIGN}
    \pS \p{Sm}
    All Any ASCII Assigned Basic_Latin Bidi_M Bidi_Mirrored BidiM Common Zyyy Sm S Gr_Base
       Grapheme_Base Graph GrBase Math Math_Symbol Pat_Syn Pattern_Syntax PatSyn POSIX_Graph
       POSIX_Print POSIX_Punct Print Symbol X_POSIX_Graph X_POSIX_Print X_POSIX_Punct
    Age=1.1 Block=Basic_Latin Bidi_Class=ON Bidi_Class=Other_Neutral BC=ON Block=ASCII BLK=ASCII
       Canonical_Combining_Class=0 Canonical_Combining_Class=Not_Reordered CCC=NR

There, that doesn’t ugly-wrap any longer.

@tchrist pleased, ty sir!

What is % called? @tchrist

Per cent sign?

3:01 AM

@skullpatrol That one is easily confusable.

U+0025 PERCENT SIGN may be confused with º/₀₀ ⁰/₀₀ a/c a/s c/o c/u º/₀ ⁰/₀ % ؉ ؊ ٪ ‰ ⁒ ℀ ℁ ℅ ℆

‭ %  0025       PERCENT SIGN
        x (arabic percent sign - 066A)
        x (per mille sign - 2030)
        x (per ten thousand sign - 2031)
        x (commercial minus sign - 2052)
‭ ٪  066A       ARABIC PERCENT SIGN
        x (percent sign - 0025)
‭ ‰  2030       PER MILLE SIGN
        = permille, per thousand
        * used, for example, in measures of blood alcohol content, salinity, etc.
        x (percent sign - 0025)
        x (arabic-indic per mille sign - 0609)
‭ ‱  2031       PER TEN THOUSAND SIGN

The last of those four is really annoying.

⁒  2052       COMMERCIAL MINUS SIGN
        = abzüglich (German), med avdrag av (Swedish), piska (Swedish, "whip")
        * a common glyph variant and fallback representation looks like ./.
        * may also be used as a dingbat to indicate correctness
        * used in Finno-Ugric Phonetic Alphabet to indicate a related borrowed form with different sound

What does x (per mille sign - 2030) mean in the output?

What it says: per thousand.

Oh.

The 'x' stuff means see those for similar glyphs.

An x is a "see confusable"; an = is a synonym for the name; a * is a comment.

like in a mushroom book :)

?

Usually there is a list of similar mushrooms that one have to look out for.

3:06 AM

‭ 🍄  1F344      MUSHROOM
‭ 💬  1F4AC      SPEECH BALLOON
        = comic book conversation bubble
‭ 📑  1F4D1      BOOKMARK TABS
‭ 📓  1F4D3      NOTEBOOK
‭ 📔  1F4D4      NOTEBOOK WITH DECORATIVE COVER
‭ 📕  1F4D5      CLOSED BOOK
‭ 📖  1F4D6      OPEN BOOK
        = read operator's manual
        * similar to ISO/IEC 7000-0790 "Read operator's manual"
‭ 📗  1F4D7      GREEN BOOK
‭ 📘  1F4D8      BLUE BOOK
‭ 📙  1F4D9      ORANGE BOOK
‭ 📚  1F4DA      BOOKS
‭ 🔖  1F516      BOOKMARK

förväxlingssvampar

Ah.

I wrote a struct tonight

So did I.

mine was close to 200 lines of code including tests, it made me sad.

3:08 AM

A 200 line struct?

That’s big.

Mine was:

struct decoder_pair {
    unsigned short tagno;
    char *(*decoder)(SV *);
};

Here is mine

My struct has only two members: tagno and decoder. But the latter is a bit eyeball-blistering.

It’s a pointer to a function that takes an argument of a pointer to an SV and returns a pointer to a char.

is it C?

Certainly. What is yours?

C#

3:12 AM

I’m afraid mine is simpler. :)

and probably better

Hard to say.

time will tell

The real goal is to have a hash you feed a tagno and get back a decoder for.

Basically, a strongly-typed function pointer.

Operator overloading makes me nervous.

Sometimes.

But equals and as_string are common overloads.

And not so scary.

I must say though, that that is a lot more work than the normal major and minor macros provide for device numbers.

it can be all kinds of dumb, think this is the first struct I have ever written.

3:18 AM

I would say you’ve written a class, not a struct.

A struct doesn’t have functional members, just data members.

A class is a struct with methods.

not in C#, a class can be null and lives on the heap, a struct is never null and can be a stack guy

It’s impossible to program in C for anything nontrivial without using structs.

You mean the object, not the class, lives on the heap.

true, the instances

I don't know if the stack is guaranteed for a struct, think it depends

Not sure what you mean.

me neither

only difference in the code would be struct|class in the definition

3:23 AM

Well, if it’s an internally ref-counted/garbage-collected language, something on the stack normally starts out with one ref, which when that frame goes away, if no copies have been made, then the ref count goes to 0 so the memory is reclaimed after destructors fire.

And really, in a high level language, you shouldn’t be thinking about stacks and heaps at all.

In a low level one, you have to, because you're expected to clean up after yourself.

I generally prefer having the maid do all the cleaning, but that can be expensive and doesn’t always get done when you want it done.

.

That was supposed to be deeply instructive at the metaphoric level.

If you just want something deeply amazing instead, check out earthquake lights.

Why is operator overloading bad?

Depends.

(on phone with Mom)

Thanks for sharing those "earthquake lights."

@tchrist yep, do you trust the source?

4:38 I should sleep, even Cerb is sleeping. Nite sirs.

3:39 AM

later pal

3:53 AM

►

EnglishMaster

4:05 AM

I naturally need to sing "twinkle twinkle little star" whenever I read alphabets in order, does anyone else have this problem too?

Are you talking about A, B, C, ...?

Yeah

How lovely.

@Cerberus It scares me.

EnglishMaster

4:28 AM

Do US highschools also have a subject such as religion or bible study?

Not anymore.

What happened?

Politics.

oh

4:43 AM

@EnglishMaster What makes you naturally need to sing "twinkle twinkle little star" whenever I read alphabets in order?

twinkle twinkle little star

A B C D E F G

EnglishMaster

Due to mnemonic teaching method

hmm..it does sound similar...

You could attach any simple tune to it, no?

nice^

I like the minor variation around 4:50.

This one has the sheet music with it:

►

4:59 AM

hmm... nicer, thanks :)

You’re welcome. It’s fun to follow along.

Yep.

Until YouTube and lyric sheets came along, I didn't know what half the songs were saying :-)

... add in Wikipedia and I get the full picture.

Well, this one says ABCDEFG. :)

5:20 AM

Straw.

Camel.

Back.

Mayhap thou shouldst attempt to recast thy queries in the second person singular, for surely the second person plural hath soundly defeated thee, yeah unto uttermost incomprehensibility, here most readily taken as mortal insult to the very tongue thou wouldst so dishonor with thy unlettered scrivenings. — tchrist 1 min ago

9:29 AM

in Lounge<C++> on Stack Overflow Chat, 4 hours ago, by Feeds

The problem with Haskell is that it's a language built on lazy evaluation and nobody's actually called for it.

oooo burn

I still love Haskell

A google search for chatty comments, if you're looking to flag things

9:42 AM

Morning. The last day of hat club.

Haha, this room doesn't display properly, maybe it is the internet connection.

morning, morning

However, I have no problem with the math room.

this room is too awesome to behold

Did someone paste a really high resolution pic above? That could be the problem...

9:46 AM

it's not particularly high res

225px × 321px

You will laugh if you see what I am seeing here of this room

The chat is almost unusable.

TRiG's is 495px × 276px

Oh @matt you got my email right?

Oh yes. It's in my inbox

Well, I hope the chat improves later on.

OK, it is much better now, after a refresh.

9:53 AM

good, good

10:06 AM

This channel has awesome colours

There are colourful personalities here :-)

there are colourful personalities in most of the top SE chat rooms

But this room takes colour into a whole new dimension.

colour! through! time!

or maybe unicorns

are unicorns another dimension?

Yip :D

!!youtube intro twilight zone

10:17 AM

!!wiki twilight zone

Twilight Zone: The Movie

Twilight Zone: The Movie is a 1983 anthology fantasy-science fiction horror film produced by Steven Spielberg and John Landis as a theatrical version of The Twilight Zone, a 1959 and '60s TV series created by Rod Serling. Vic Morrow, Scatman Crothers, Kathleen Quinlan and John Lithgow star, with Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks in the prologue segment. Burgess Meredith, who starred in four episodes of the original series, took on Serling's position as narrator; unlike Serling he did not appear on screen, nor did he receive screen credit, though his name appears in the end credits. In additio...

!!wiki unicorn

Unicorn

The unicorn is a legendary animal that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. The unicorn was depicted in ancient seals of the Indus Valley Civilization and was mentioned by the ancient Greeks in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, and Aelian. The Bible also describes an animal, the re'em, which some translations have rendered with the word unicorn. In European folklore, the unicorn is often depicted as a white horselike or goatlike animal with a long h...

11:25 AM

Happy New Year - I just lost my job! Woohoo!

oh no! what happened?

It's a digital agency - they get rid of contractors ruthlessly.

ABout 20 of us.

nasty

do you have other work lined up?

Not at the minute but I have some good transferable skills so I should be okay. Willing to travel helps, etc.

On CWJobs at the moment...

41 SE hats makes me highly employable.

nothing on SO careers?

(assuming you're a programmer)

11:29 AM

Will have to have a look. More of a project/dev manager nowadays but it's like riding a bike...

Have cash, will codez.

@Ste oh yes, it's what all the top firms look for :D

Basically dossing about over the holidays! Haha!

nice

Might have to wait to book that golf trip though...

yeah, maybe

11:32 AM

@Ste :(

I lost my job at the end of November, for some stupid mundane reason

wasn't difficult to find a replacement position though, was working again within a couple of weeks

It sucks.

Yeah, I should be okay.

As I said, I'll work anywhere up and down the country so it should be cool.

normally losing a job makes me sleep lots, didn't allow it to happen this time and I barely noticed being unemployed

Yeah, I've done the whole "sleep till noon" thing before. Not very healthy.

what I didn't enjoy about my job switch is the travel time

before I was living next door to my place of work, I could fall out of bed 30 minutes before starting and still arrive early

now I have an hour of driving to get here

and I start an hour earlier

I miss sleeping until 9am every day

Yeah, rush hour is a huge waste of good time

11:42 AM

I hate daily commutes. Currently I get a 5-hour train fortnightly and stay in a lodge right by work.

me too

I get stuck in traffic on the way there and back

but I've found all of the shortcut back allies to drive down

so my 80 minute drive only takes ~40

by driving down a bunch of roads running parallel with the roads my satnav wants to use

Thanks @KitFox! (I assume you've just gone through the flag queue)

Shines up new marshall badge

gz

Puts on new top hat

Well done, Matt.

11:48 AM

Ta!

Can I get a vote on this please for my last hat? english.stackexchange.com/questions/144414/…

Thanking you!

yes

Cheers. I have every hat except Eureka now.

And I still have zero idea how to get it.,

I could tell you

but I'm already slipping away down the leaderboard

@kalina Come on - it's the last day!

11:55 AM

exactly, there's nothing I can do to improve my position!

and I'm unemployed..... sob sob

lol

It's manually awarded, yeah? So who do I pester?

who said it was manually awarded?

some folks in another chatroom

11:57 AM

Well that was the theory we heard.

which other chat room?

yeah, I've drunk a lot since that day, so...

the fact I remember it was a chatroom is surprising

I'm so glad it was that that was in my clipboard and not something else

that could have been... awkward

NO EVIDENCE WAS LEFT

bwahahahaha

...