[mb-style] Is french silly? :p (French capitalization rules)

[Olivier-10]

Hi!

MLL recently opened-up the can of worms again :p, so I guess it's a
good time to sort it out.
It was a bit messy and I guess I wasn't specially kind myself, given I
first thought MLL was simply trying to override styleguide to his own
tastes, which he definitely wasn't.
No hard feelings MLL? ;)

So, I'm taking on the hassle to try to sum up here what has been said,
and what could be done.

First, for these not really familiar with it:
a) French capitalization simply follows sentence mode cap: only the
first letter of the sentence is capped (and the first letter of proper
nouns of course).
b) In the case the title *is not* a verbal phrase and matches one of
the two following schemes, we cap all the words of the scheme:
"adjective noun"
"definite article, [[adverb], adjective], noun"  ([] denotes an
optional element in the scheme).


MLL (and others) propose to discard b), and just stick with sentence
mode cap for every case (but artist intent).

Arguments are:
a - the "exceptions" are complex to understand
b - ambiguous
c - counter-intuitive
d - silly
e - most people don't use them, as they don't understand them
f - there has been some discussion at wikipedia about them, so they
are not really a consensus


It's a known fact I feel strongly again that removal proposition :D,
so I won't state my arguments right now, but rather wait and give a
chance to MLL (or others) to precise their point more specifically if
I didn't sum it properly.

Regards,

- Olivier (a.k.a. dmppanda)

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[bogdanb]

I'm curious, where did the the idea of the exceptions came from?

It seems rather strange to me, especially the fact that they apply
even if the title contains other words. For example "The Highly
Unbelievable Story of anything else" would look very weird, even in
French. I could see the point of "The Story of some imaginary title"
or "The Wondorous Story", though I don't see why "An incredible story"
would be different.

In the interest of consistency and uniformity I'd drop all exceptions.
But I'd still want to know what's their origin.

--
Bogdan Butnaru — bogdanb@...
"I think I am a fallen star, I should wish on myself." – O.


On 7/26/06, Mangled <viapanda@...> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> MLL recently opened-up the can of worms again :p, so I guess it's a
> good time to sort it out.
> It was a bit messy and I guess I wasn't specially kind myself, given I
> first thought MLL was simply trying to override styleguide to his own
> tastes, which he definitely wasn't.
> No hard feelings MLL? ;)
>
> So, I'm taking on the hassle to try to sum up here what has been said,
> and what could be done.
>
> First, for these not really familiar with it:
> a) French capitalization simply follows sentence mode cap: only the
> first letter of the sentence is capped (and the first letter of proper
> nouns of course).
> b) In the case the title *is not* a verbal phrase and matches one of
> the two following schemes, we cap all the words of the scheme:
> "adjective noun"
> "definite article, [[adverb], adjective], noun"  ([] denotes an
> optional element in the scheme).
>
>
> MLL (and others) propose to discard b), and just stick with sentence
> mode cap for every case (but artist intent).
>
> Arguments are:
> a - the "exceptions" are complex to understand
> b - ambiguous
> c - counter-intuitive
> d - silly
> e - most people don't use them, as they don't understand them
> f - there has been some discussion at wikipedia about them, so they
> are not really a consensus
>
>
> It's a known fact I feel strongly again that removal proposition :D,
> so I won't state my arguments right now, but rather wait and give a
> chance to MLL (or others) to precise their point more specifically if
> I didn't sum it properly.
>
> Regards,
>
> - Olivier (a.k.a. dmppanda)

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[Nikki-12]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 08:41:50PM +0200, Mangled wrote:

> First, for these not really familiar with it:
> a) French capitalization simply follows sentence mode cap: only the
> first letter of the sentence is capped (and the first letter of proper
> nouns of course).
> b) In the case the title *is not* a verbal phrase and matches one of
> the two following schemes, we cap all the words of the scheme:
> "adjective noun"
> "definite article, [[adverb], adjective], noun"  ([] denotes an
> optional element in the scheme).
>
> MLL (and others) propose to discard b), and just stick with sentence
> mode cap for every case (but artist intent).
>
> Arguments are:
> a - the "exceptions" are complex to understand
> b - ambiguous
> c - counter-intuitive
> d - silly
> e - most people don't use them, as they don't understand them
> f - there has been some discussion at wikipedia about them, so they
> are not really a consensus

Personally I much prefer standard sentence case because it's much simpler
[1] to use and is more consistent; capitalising half of the sentence and
not the other half looks really strange to me and I don't understand why
'le' makes words capitalised and not 'un'. Furthermore, I don't recall
seeing any new add release edits where the capitalisation was correct by
our current guidelines -- the vast majority seem to be either sentence case
or English-style most/every word capitalised. Also, because of its
complexity, we can't develop a guess case mode for it.

--Nikki, who isn't a native French speaker and also still doesn't
understand when to capitalise words in French.

1: Out of our 25 capitalisation standards, 19 are normal sentence case
(i.e. first letter and all proper nouns capitalised), 4 are every word
capitalised except for a short list of conjunctions etc. and just French
and German are complex enough to require the editor to understand the
language.

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[Olivier-10]

> Personally I much prefer standard sentence case because it's much simpler

Being "simpler" doesn't make it "good", or even "better".
Argument discarded, says the prosecutor :D

> [1] to use and is more consistent; capitalising half of the sentence and not the other half

The so-called "exceptions" do not apply to sentences, but only to non
verbal phrases.

> looks really strange to me

So I guess you are not very familiar with french books (which is not a
problem, and is perfectly understandable given you're not a native).

To me, it looks perfectly natural.

> and I don't understand why
> 'le' makes words capitalised and not 'un'.

Because definite articles are not indefinite articles.

> Furthermore, I don't recall
> seeing any new add release edits where the capitalisation was correct by
> our current guidelines

Me neither, as I don't enter french releases, and I don't vote a lot.
Still, I know I fixed quite a few, and I know there are other
moderators actually fixing them.

Again, to me, the fact some/most people don't read/understand/follow
guidelines doesn't proove these rules are essentially wrong.

> -- the vast majority seem to be either sentence case
> or English-style most/every word capitalised.

I would say most of them are entered English-style, and 90% of the
time are simply murdered (accents are the first victim).

> Also, because of its
> complexity,

Once again: I don't see any complexity in them, and everybody I asked
(including these wanting to remove them) perfectly understand them.
So I think this point is moot: they are *not* complex.

> we can't develop a guess case mode for it.

Who says that? Keschte? (*ping* Keschte)
And no, it's not because of its (supposed) complexity, but because
Guess Case doesn't understand grammar.
The fact computer are bad at dealing with grammar (or semantic) is not
an argument IMO.

There are a lot of things computers are bad at doing.

That's why we need human editors.

>
> --Nikki, who isn't a native French speaker and also still doesn't
> understand when to capitalise words in French.

Don't cap if it's a verbal phrase.
If it match one of the two simple schemes, and you can identify
grammar function of the words, just cap'em ;)

Oh, well, forget about it - just drop me a mail when you need some :p

>
> 1: Out of our 25 capitalisation standards, 19 are normal sentence case
> (i.e. first letter and all proper nouns capitalised), 4 are every word
> capitalised except for a short list of conjunctions etc. and just French
> and German are complex enough to require the editor to understand the
> language.

Mmmm, so I guess the next victim will be german? hey, Shep! ;)

- Olivier

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[Olivier-10]

2006/7/26, Bogdan Butnaru <bogdanb@...>:
> I'm curious, where did the the idea of the exceptions came from?

They are not exceptions. That's a myth.
They are rules.
There are two rules: one for sentence (sentence mode), and one for non
verbal phrases (cap if it match one of the two schemes)

>
> It seems rather strange to me, especially the fact that they apply
> even if the title contains other words. For example "The Highly
> Unbelievable Story of anything else" would look very weird, even in
> French. I could see the point of "The Story of some imaginary title"
> or "The Wondorous Story", though I don't see why "An incredible story"
> would be different.

French is silly? :p

>
> In the interest of consistency and uniformity I'd drop all exceptions.

In the interest of keeping MB in phase with proper french usage as
used in the editing industry, I would keep them ;)

> But I'd still want to know what's their origin.

I think I recall the wikipedia discussion has some hints and give a
number of good publications to back it.
At the end of it, still, it boils down to: common usage and inherited
typographic practices.
Which you can of course criticize ;)

- Olivier

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[Thomas Tholén-2]

Sorry for the ignorance, but
A) What's a "verbal phrase"?
B) What's a "proper noun"?

//[bnw]

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[Olivier-10]

2006/7/27, Thomas Tholén <Thomas.Tholen.0851@...>:
> Sorry for the ignorance, but
> A) What's a "verbal phrase"?

errr... now you criticize my english :D

"The panda eat bamboo last sunday" is a verbal phrase, a sentence.
"The Mangled Panda" is not.

> B) What's a "proper noun"?

"My name is Olivier"
"My name is not panda"

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[Alex Dupuy]

Nikki writes:

>1: Out of our 25 capitalisation standards, 19 are normal sentence case
>(i.e. first letter and all proper nouns capitalised), 4 are every word
>capitalised except for a short list of conjunctions etc. and just French
>and German are complex enough to require the editor to understand the
>language.
>

This is an interesting statistic.  I wonder if the prevalence of
"Sentence case" in different languages, and the possibility of a bias
for people to prefer the capitalization of their native language, may be
the motivation for "simplification" here.

The "simplicity" of the sentence case standard makes we wonder whether
it might be possible to find a technological solution to this problem
that makes more people happy.  If it weren't for the pesky problem with
proper nouns, it would be possible to implement a user preference for
"Sentence capitalization always" - which would force all titles into
Sentence capitalization for tagging and (non-editable) display.  This
might reduce the clamor by people who find unfamiliar capitalization
standards confusing, but could cause more problems than it solves, as it
would create an invisible division in the community.  People who
selected that preference might blithely add titles in sentence case
regardless of the appropriate language standard; disabling the forced
Sentence caps in editable fields is an attempt to prevent that kind of
behavior, but it would be an incomplete solution.

At any rate, the pretty-much-insoluble problem of proper nouns makes
this impractical, although it might be worthwhile to have a TaggerScript
option for this (especially if a file with a user-provided list of
proper nouns were an option).  (Acronyms and other words with more than
one capital letter would be considered as proper nouns implicitly).

For the record, my personal preference is for the current French
capitalization standard; although despite my name I'm not a native
French speaker.  I can even understand the distinction between the
behavior for definite and indefinite articles, since the former are more
specific; they are accordingly a step or two closer to the specificity
of a proper nouns, which seem to be worthy capitalization in every
language that has such a concept.  And the capitalization of initial
noun phrases is not so dissimilar from the German rule of capitalizing
Nouns.

@alex


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[Nikki-12]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 12:23:39AM +0200, Thomas Tholén wrote:
> B) What's a "proper noun"?

Proper nouns are things like names of people and places.

--Nikki

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[Beth-2]

I think it Is a mistake to simplify if there are standard rules known. After
all, we could easily say, it's easier not to fight through artist intent
with an artist that has all their name in lowercase (matchbox twenty) or
Japanese tracks that have CAPS every second track on a release.

I think we need to respect the language and artist for each demographic and
culture if infact we are going to respect any.

Nyght

-----Original Message-----
From: musicbrainz-style-bounces@...
[mailto:musicbrainz-style-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Alex
Dupuy
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 4:53 PM
To: musicbrainz-style@...
Subject: Re: [mb-style] Is french silly? :p (French capitalization rules)

Nikki writes:

>1: Out of our 25 capitalisation standards, 19 are normal sentence case
>(i.e. first letter and all proper nouns capitalised), 4 are every word
>capitalised except for a short list of conjunctions etc. and just French
>and German are complex enough to require the editor to understand the
>language.
>

This is an interesting statistic.  I wonder if the prevalence of
"Sentence case" in different languages, and the possibility of a bias
for people to prefer the capitalization of their native language, may be
the motivation for "simplification" here.

The "simplicity" of the sentence case standard makes we wonder whether
it might be possible to find a technological solution to this problem
that makes more people happy.  If it weren't for the pesky problem with
proper nouns, it would be possible to implement a user preference for
"Sentence capitalization always" - which would force all titles into
Sentence capitalization for tagging and (non-editable) display.  This
might reduce the clamor by people who find unfamiliar capitalization
standards confusing, but could cause more problems than it solves, as it
would create an invisible division in the community.  People who
selected that preference might blithely add titles in sentence case
regardless of the appropriate language standard; disabling the forced
Sentence caps in editable fields is an attempt to prevent that kind of
behavior, but it would be an incomplete solution.

At any rate, the pretty-much-insoluble problem of proper nouns makes
this impractical, although it might be worthwhile to have a TaggerScript
option for this (especially if a file with a user-provided list of
proper nouns were an option).  (Acronyms and other words with more than
one capital letter would be considered as proper nouns implicitly).

For the record, my personal preference is for the current French
capitalization standard; although despite my name I'm not a native
French speaker.  I can even understand the distinction between the
behavior for definite and indefinite articles, since the former are more
specific; they are accordingly a step or two closer to the specificity
of a proper nouns, which seem to be worthy capitalization in every
language that has such a concept.  And the capitalization of initial
noun phrases is not so dissimilar from the German rule of capitalizing
Nouns.

@alex


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[Thomas Tholén-2]

Citerar Mangled <viapanda@...>:

> 2006/7/27, Thomas Tholén <Thomas.Tholen.0851@...>:
> > Sorry for the ignorance, but
> > A) What's a "verbal phrase"?
>
> errr... now you criticize my english :D

Nonono, I criticize my own english. I just simply didn't know what they meant.
Thanks!

//[bnw]

>
> "The panda eat bamboo last sunday" is a verbal phrase, a sentence.
> "The Mangled Panda" is not.
>
> > B) What's a "proper noun"?
>
> "My name is Olivier"
> "My name is not panda"
>
> _______________________________________________
> Musicbrainz-style mailing list
> Musicbrainz-style@...
> http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
>

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[mll]

Mmmmh you didn' let me lurk very long did you ? :) Moreover, I have my
main PC going in pieces, so I'll try & be concise.

(FYI mangled refers to the discussion at the bottom of
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/CapitalizationStandardFrench)

First, I want to precise that french is my mother tongue, and that I'm
litterate (so you better hear my arguments - and excuse my weak english-).

I my everyday typing, I put my proudness into having a correct grammar &
orthography. Now for these title caps rules, I thing they're not
pragmatic at all.

You quite well summed up my points. I'll add other ones, sometimes
previously quoted by others:

- for 1 release added according to these rules, you have maybe 10 added
in sentence mode (and unfortunately 5 in english caps mode)

- theses rules are so complex, we won't ever be able to make a
javascript guess case for them IMO.

- as WP says (read header of
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Conventions_typographiques),
these are no rules, and I'll add they're widely unused (and very
controversial and complex, read
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Wikip%C3%A9dia:Conventions_typographiques#TITRES).
I just looked at my bookshelves, the very rarely apply these rules. Most
of the time it's either all caps "AU PLAISIR DE DIEU", Gallimard / "Le
cri de la mouette", Laffont / Even a Goncourt and Medicis prize like "Le
testament français", Mercure de France". I can provide plenty of other
examples. The Wikipedia rules are rarely met (about 4% of my books).

- not only are they unused, they shock the eyes (mine at least), example
"Le Bon, la brute et le truand" is ugly IMO

So my proposal is to be pragmatic and use rules that are
- simple to understand (& implement in the guess case applet, actually,
it's done actually - save for proper nouns obviously)
- easy to apply, enforce & correct
- used by the vast majority in the real world (bookshelves & MB
especially) - sorry for the small percentage of data on MB that you
might have modded to these rules.

My proposal, as on the wiki, is:

Put in upper case (capitale)

     * the first letter of a title ("Crache ton venin", "Un autre
monde", "Le bon, la brute et le truand")
     * the first letter of proper nouns ("Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie
Poulain")
     * while respecting author intent ("eXistenZ", "amaroK")

MLL



Mangled a écrit :

> Hi!
>
> MLL recently opened-up the can of worms again :p, so I guess it's a
> good time to sort it out.
> It was a bit messy and I guess I wasn't specially kind myself, given I
> first thought MLL was simply trying to override styleguide to his own
> tastes, which he definitely wasn't.
> No hard feelings MLL? ;)
>
> So, I'm taking on the hassle to try to sum up here what has been said,
> and what could be done.
>
> First, for these not really familiar with it:
> a) French capitalization simply follows sentence mode cap: only the
> first letter of the sentence is capped (and the first letter of proper
> nouns of course).
> b) In the case the title *is not* a verbal phrase and matches one of
> the two following schemes, we cap all the words of the scheme:
> "adjective noun"
> "definite article, [[adverb], adjective], noun"  ([] denotes an
> optional element in the scheme).
>
>
> MLL (and others) propose to discard b), and just stick with sentence
> mode cap for every case (but artist intent).
>
> Arguments are:
> a - the "exceptions" are complex to understand
> b - ambiguous
> c - counter-intuitive
> d - silly
> e - most people don't use them, as they don't understand them
> f - there has been some discussion at wikipedia about them, so they
> are not really a consensus
>
>
> It's a known fact I feel strongly again that removal proposition :D,
> so I won't state my arguments right now, but rather wait and give a
> chance to MLL (or others) to precise their point more specifically if
> I didn't sum it properly.
>
> Regards,
>
> - Olivier (a.k.a. dmppanda)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Musicbrainz-style mailing list
> Musicbrainz-style@...
> http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style

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[keschte]

> Put in upper case (capitale)
>
>     * the first letter of a title ("Crache ton venin", "Un autre
> monde", "Le bon, la brute et le truand")
>     * the first letter of proper nouns ("Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie
> Poulain")
>     * while respecting author intent ("eXistenZ", "amaroK")

additionally, add a space before punctuation like "?" "!", since this
is common in french titles, right?

regards, keschte

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[Nikki-12]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 10:11:30AM +0200, Stefan Kestenholz wrote:
> additionally, add a space before punctuation like "?" "!", since this
> is common in french titles, right?

Well, it's not that it's common, that's just how certain punctuation is done in
French. :)

--Nikki

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[Nikki-12]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 06:22:28PM -0600, Beth wrote:
> I think it Is a mistake to simplify if there are standard rules known.
> After all, we could easily say, it's easier not to fight through artist
> intent with an artist that has all their name in lowercase (matchbox
> twenty) or Japanese tracks that have CAPS every second track on a
> release.

The problem appears to be that there is no standard.

--Nikki

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[bogdanb]

On 7/27/06, Thomas Tholén <Thomas.Tholen.0851@...> wrote:
> Sorry for the ignorance, but
> A) What's a "verbal phrase"?
I English it's a phrase (~ string of words with a meaning) that
contains a verb that is not a predicate. "To do something" and "The
pleasure of doing something" are examples.

I'm not sure if it's the same in French, it seems weird that sentences
(eg "The Thing that I do") would not be excluded.

> B) What's a "proper noun"?
In short, names.  "New York", "Thomas" or "Black Beauty" (the horse)
are proper nouns, while "city", "man" and "horse" are common nouns.

--
Bogdan Butnaru — bogdanb@...
"I think I am a fallen star, I should wish on myself." – O.

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[bogdanb]

On 7/27/06, Beth <imbethers@...> wrote:
> I think it Is a mistake to simplify if there are standard rules known. [...]
> I think we need to respect the language and artist for each demographic
> and culture if infact we are going to respect any.

I absolutely agree with this. The problem is that this particular case
there is no single set of rules.

I just read through most of the French wiki pages on the subject, and
this comes very clearly from the discussion pages: there is no single
standard. The several authorities in the matter simply don't agree on
the matter. Some systems are even impossible to correctly represent
with our software (for example, one system calls for "the Noun" in a
sentence and "The Noun" when the same title starts the sentence). I've
even seen systems calling for the capitalization of all nouns in
French too.

In such cases I think we do have to think hard and pick one system.
And when we have that oportunity, I think the only justified choice is
to pick the simple one.

(I'll say that again: I don't advocate simplifying anything. I
advocate simplifying whenever there is no good reason to do it the
hard way. If there existed a standard of French capitalization,
uniformity would have been a good reason to follow it. Since there
isn't (or rather, there are several), the best choice is the
simplicity.)

I could even agree to what is currently the standard on Wikipedia,
with the argument that if there are several standards we could choose
the one closest to us (open, editable content). But we don't, and even
the wikipedians disagree on what the rules are. Make no mistake, our
current rules are simpler, and they don't really agree with Wikipedia.

-- Bogdan Butnaru — bogdanb@...
"I think I am a fallen star, I should wish on myself." – O.

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[Nikki-12]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 12:13:00AM +0200, Mangled wrote:
> >Personally I much prefer standard sentence case because it's much
> >simpler
>
> Being "simpler" doesn't make it "good", or even "better".  Argument
> discarded, says the prosecutor :D

When did I say that it makes it good or better? I simply stated my
preference.

> Because definite articles are not indefinite articles.

That's just stating what I said with bigger words. Why do definite articles
make words capitalised and not indefinite artciles?

> >Furthermore, I don't recall seeing any new add release edits where the
> >capitalisation was correct by our current guidelines
>
> Me neither, as I don't enter french releases, and I don't vote a lot.
> Still, I know I fixed quite a few, and I know there are other moderators
> actually fixing them.
>
> Again, to me, the fact some/most people don't read/understand/follow
> guidelines doesn't proove these rules are essentially wrong.

I didn't say that the rules are wrong. However, there is no point in
deciding on rules that nobody except a couple of people use.

> I would say most of them are entered English-style, and 90% of the time
> are simply murdered (accents are the first victim).

I had a look through 50 recent French albums, there were 30 sentence caps,
17 English style and 3 with just the important words capitalised. The only
ones added using the current guidelines were a couple by you and azertus.
Are you planning on editing every single French album that gets added?

> >Also, because of its complexity,
>
> Once again: I don't see any complexity in them, and everybody I asked
> (including these wanting to remove them) perfectly understand them.  So I
> think this point is moot: they are *not* complex.

and who did you ask? You didn't ask me and I don't perfectly understand them.

Of course you don't find them hard, you're a native speaker and you like
these rules. They're still complex in that they require knowledge of the
language and its grammar. When deciding whether a word is capitalised
depends on its function and position in a sentence, whether the title
starts with specific words and whether it conains verbs or not. That's a
lot of things to consider when nearly all the others are simply "is this a
name? if yes, capitalise it" or "is this a word from a short list of
joining words? if yes, lowercase it".

> Don't cap if it's a verbal phrase.  If it match one of the two simple
> schemes, and you can identify grammar function of the words, just cap'em
> ;)
>
> Oh, well, forget about it - just drop me a mail when you need some :p

Guess I won't bother fixing any French titles then. Oh well, more work for
you.

I really think we should be choosing something sensible, in that people are
likely to actually use it. You already know that many French albums are a
mess, but by choosing these guidelines we're making it so that everything
except what a couple of people have edited is a mess.

> Mmmm, so I guess the next victim will be german? hey, Shep! ;)

There's one big difference, German just uses normal sentence
capitalisation, it just so happens that nouns are always capitalised, title
or not.

--Nikki

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[Beth-2]

-----Original Message-----
From: musicbrainz-style-bounces@...
[mailto:musicbrainz-style-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Nikki
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 7:51 AM
To: MusicBrainz style discussion
Subject: Re: [mb-style] Is french silly? :p (French capitalization rules)

<snip>
>
> Again, to me, the fact some/most people don't read/understand/follow
> guidelines doesn't proove these rules are essentially wrong.

I didn't say that the rules are wrong. However, there is no point in
deciding on rules that nobody except a couple of people use.

[beth] I disagree, why else did we have such a discussion on latin, and I
feel if there are rules in place before there is a large user interface
actively using those rules, then it's much easier to back it up before it
becomes a huge problem.[/beth]


> I would say most of them are entered English-style, and 90% of the time
> are simply murdered (accents are the first victim).

I had a look through 50 recent French albums, there were 30 sentence caps,
17 English style and 3 with just the important words capitalised. The only
ones added using the current guidelines were a couple by you and azertus.
Are you planning on editing every single French album that gets added?

> >Also, because of its complexity,
>
> Once again: I don't see any complexity in them, and everybody I asked
> (including these wanting to remove them) perfectly understand them.  So I
> think this point is moot: they are *not* complex.

and who did you ask? You didn't ask me and I don't perfectly understand
them.

Of course you don't find them hard, you're a native speaker and you like
these rules. They're still complex in that they require knowledge of the
language and its grammar. When deciding whether a word is capitalised
depends on its function and position in a sentence, whether the title
starts with specific words and whether it conains verbs or not. That's a
lot of things to consider when nearly all the others are simply "is this a
name? if yes, capitalise it" or "is this a word from a short list of
joining words? if yes, lowercase it".

[beth] Nikki, sorry, you have extreme knowledge on the Japanese artists,
many of us don't. In my opinion your instance here is looking at this in the
same light many of us see the Japanese guidelines. I believe this was
specifically speaking in terms of the active voters in the active artists,
and it is, I feel the same reason the Japanese guidelines were created as
they were.[/beth]

> Don't cap if it's a verbal phrase.  If it match one of the two simple
> schemes, and you can identify grammar function of the words, just cap'em
> ;)
>
> Oh, well, forget about it - just drop me a mail when you need some :p

Guess I won't bother fixing any French titles then. Oh well, more work for
you.

I really think we should be choosing something sensible, in that people are
likely to actually use it. You already know that many French albums are a
mess, but by choosing these guidelines we're making it so that everything
except what a couple of people have edited is a mess.

> Mmmm, so I guess the next victim will be german? hey, Shep! ;)

There's one big difference, German just uses normal sentence
capitalisation, it just so happens that nouns are always capitalised, title
or not.

--Nikki

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[Nikki-12]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 07:57:48AM -0600, Beth wrote:
> I didn't say that the rules are wrong. However, there is no point in
> deciding on rules that nobody except a couple of people use.
>
>> I disagree, why else did we have such a discussion on latin, and I feel
>> if there are rules in place before there is a large user interface
>> actively using those rules, then it's much easier to back it up before
>> it becomes a huge problem.

Except there are only 150 albums marked as Latin and over 5000 as French.
The capitalisation of French titles is already a big problem. It seems to
be a roughly half and half split between sentence and English, so why would
we choose a system that the *vast* majority of people don't use? It seems
to me that hardly anyone expects titles to be capitalised as they are, and
when you also consider that MusicBrainz has a constant flow of new people,
it's much easier all round to use one of the capitalisation systems people
expect. It's easier to teach 50% of people to use sentence case and fix
2500 albums than it is to teach 99% of people to use the current French
guidelines and fix 5000 albums.

> Of course you don't find them hard, you're a native speaker and you like
> these rules. They're still complex in that they require knowledge of the
> language and its grammar. When deciding whether a word is capitalised
> depends on its function and position in a sentence, whether the title
> starts with specific words and whether it conains verbs or not. That's a
> lot of things to consider when nearly all the others are simply "is this
> a name? if yes, capitalise it" or "is this a word from a short list of
> joining words? if yes, lowercase it".
>
>> Nikki, sorry, you have extreme knowledge on the Japanese artists, many
>> of us don't. In my opinion your instance here is looking at this in the
>> same light many of us see the Japanese guidelines. I believe this was
>> specifically speaking in terms of the active voters in the active
>> artists, and it is, I feel the same reason the Japanese guidelines were
>> created as they were.

But the situation is completely different. Japanese non-standardness is
widely supported by people who listen to Japanese music and they tend to
defend it fiercely. There is no consensus about the French guidelines and
even many French people themselves aren't using our current ones. How are
we supposed to get people to use the guidelines when even people who are
native speakers aren't even using them? The burden of keeping 5000 and
growing albums in order will be on a just few people, that just won't work.

--Nikki

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