Quoting hal9g:

Quote:
Personally, because I have a spelling fetish, I always prefer to see proper spelling used in all cases when converting from all caps to mixed case.  I'd be happy to rely on the language skills of others to do it correctly in languages that I am unfamiliar with.

Nice to hear this. Specially the stuff about relying on the skills of others for things we may not be as familiar with as needed. Some people think everybody should be able to enter every detail of a profile without any background knowledge, when the online database should be a team effort.

Quote:
Of course, Ken would have to rescind his previous position to allow for this.

No, he wouldn't need to, because he has clarified his language independent de-capitalisation method for person's names only for the purpose of linking.

Quoting Ken Cole:

Quote:
We maintain that the most commonly credited form of a person's name is how they should be entered in DVD Profiler, with the Credited As field used where this does not match.  Unfortunately, in most cases there is not definitive source for the actor's name, and in many cases the name changes over time.

Linking variations as a solution creates issues where there are overlaps, which if all variants are allowed become all too frequent.  The Credited As solution as implemented allows the two main goals: Credits listed 'As Credited', and the ability to cross-link all credits for a given actor.

This thread is specifically about accents and special characters. 

Quoting lmoelleb:

Quote:
2) Use English rules to do the actual conversion between lower and upper case (so always convert "E" to "e", never to "é").

No, there are no special English rules to apply.  Since "é" has a corresponding "É", simple capital conversion is all that's required.  If the character used in the all-caps name is "É", convert it to "é" as needed to create mixed case.  If the character used in all-caps is "E", convert it to "e" as needed to create mixed case.

Quoting hal9g:

Quote:
Quoting RHo:

Quote:
No, he wouldn't need to, because he has clarified his language independent de-capitalisation method for person's names only for the purpose of linking.

I think it would be useful for Ken to clearly spell this out in the Rules, since it is obvious that some users think this does apply to all fields, in spite of the fact that it specifically only names the actor field.

How can he spell out the limitations of his clarification in the rules, when even the clarification itself is not part of the rules?

Quoting RHo:

Quote:
Quoting hal9g:

Quote:
Personally, because I have a spelling fetish, I always prefer to see proper spelling used in all cases when converting from all caps to mixed case.  I'd be happy to rely on the language skills of others to do it correctly in languages that I am unfamiliar with.

Nice to hear this. Specially the stuff about relying on the skills of others for things we may not be as familiar with as needed. Some people think everybody should be able to enter every detail of a profile without any background knowledge, when the online database should be a team effort.

Quote:
Of course, Ken would have to rescind his previous position to allow for this.

No, he wouldn't need to, because he has clarified his language independent de-capitalisation method for person's names only for the purpose of linking.

Quoting Ken Cole:

Quote:
We maintain that the most commonly credited form of a person's name is how they should be entered in DVD Profiler, with the Credited As field used where this does not match.  Unfortunately, in most cases there is not definitive source for the actor's name, and in many cases the name changes over time.

Linking variations as a solution creates issues where there are overlaps, which if all variants are allowed become all too frequent.  The Credited As solution as implemented allows the two main goals: Credits listed 'As Credited', and the ability to cross-link all credits for a given actor.

This thread is specifically about accents and special characters. 

Quoting lmoelleb:

Quote:
2) Use English rules to do the actual conversion between lower and upper case (so always convert "E" to "e", never to "é").

No, there are no special English rules to apply.  Since "é" has a corresponding "É", simple capital conversion is all that's required.  If the character used in the all-caps name is "É", convert it to "é" as needed to create mixed case.  If the character used in all-caps is "E", convert it to "e" as needed to create mixed case.

What a horrible idea, wait for the expert to clue us in here. Assuming the expert knows, and you aren't Rho. Don't even. No we have data cards they are called Credits, if you were doing data entry for a job and you started deviating from the data cards, rho, using your argument or surfeur's neither of you would be drawing a paycheck for very long.  Rule #1, of every database I have ever designed or had any familiarity with, to the data entry people is enter the data from the card, don't deviate, don't try and interpret, just enter the data. Not entering the data can result in $1.00 becoming $100 or worse. We are not spelling Profiler, if qwe start doing that you will all lose and i will win, we are not typing Profiler ( I LOSE, big time). We are DVDProfiler, which because of its nature, could also be called MovieProfiler and TVProfiler. I always enjoy it because sometime people make a big deal out that with little understanding. DVDs, Movies and TVs are inextricably linked, just as VHS is also linked to them, we deal with the DVDs, I mean someday Ken may change us to MediaProfiler, wow what might that mean. Movies, TVS, DVD, Blu-Rays, Lasers , tapes, even Music (maybe), Books (Maybe), I don't know. But the Movie data is inextricably tied to the DVD, if we literally just Profiled the DVDs the database would be very boring a whole lot smaller and whole lot less participation, guaranteed.

Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

Quote:
Rule #1, of every database I have ever designed or had any familiarity with, to the data entry people is enter the data from the card, don't deviate, don't try and interpret, just enter the data.

The problem with this argument is that when we are dealing with all caps, we are specifically directed to "deviate from the card", otherwise we'd be entering all caps.  The question is do we blindly do the conversion regardless of spelling errors in the outcome, or do we intelligently perform the conversion in order to preserve the integrity of the language we are dealing with?

Perhaps the ultimate solution to all this, is to just enter all caps as all caps.  End of all debate! 

Quoting hal9g:

Quote:

Can anyone confirm (or deny) that capitalization Rules for French (and other languages) actually include instructions on how to convert letters (other than the first letter of the word) to lower case?  If such instructions exist, perhaps posting them in a special reference thread would be useful for the entire community.

You have a very interesting explanation of this on this article, unfortunately it is in french. The interesting part for our purpose is this :
"En français, « l’accent a pleine valeur orthographique ». L’Académie française recommande donc l’usage d’accent ou tréma sur une majuscule, tout comme l’utilisation de la cédille. Ainsi les publications de qualité écrivent les majuscules (tout comme les capitales) avec les accents et autres diacritiques, au même titre que les minuscules. En effet, les signes diacritiques ont un rôle important dans les langues qui les utilisent..

Cependant, dans une grande partie du monde francophone (Suisse romande notamment, mais pas au Québec), seuls les minuscules et les mots en toutes capitales sont accentués dans les textes courants. Les signes diacritiques ne sont systématiquement reproduits que dans les publications soignées : dictionnaires, encyclopédies, Collection de la Pléiade… On trouve donc écrit Etat (sic) dans les publications courantes et État dans les publications soignées.

La simple lecture des titres de livres dans une bibliothèque, ou dans les livres scolaires, démontre que l’accentuation des majuscules est ancienne et courante. La pratique tendant à ne pas indiquer les accents sur les majuscules et les capitales trouve sa source dans l’utilisation de caractères de plomb à taille fixe en imprimerie. La hauteur d’une capitale accentuée étant supérieure, la solution était alors soit de graver des caractères spéciaux pour les capitales accentuées en diminuant la hauteur de la lettre, soit de mettre l’accent après la lettre, soit simplement de ne pas mettre l’accent. Cette dernière option a souvent été utilisée durant des siècles, et l’est parfois encore, même si, avec l’arrivée de l’informatique, ces difficultés se sont maintenant estompées.

D’autres problèmes subsistent encore : sous Windows, sur les claviers français AZERTY, où l’accent grave et l’accent aigu sont systématiquement associés à des lettres minuscules (« é », « è », « à », « ù »), la pose de ces accents sur des majuscules impose des manipulations alambiquées. Il est particulièrement difficile de produire des majuscules accentuées sur un ordinateur portable non muni d’un pavé numérique[9]. L’opération est plus facile quand les accents sont indépendants des lettres, comme l’accent circonflexe, le tréma, l’accent grave (en AltGr+7) ou le tilde (en AltGr+2) sur le clavier français, ou avec un clavier utilisé avec GNU/Linux, ou encore avec un clavier Macintosh. Il n’y a pas de touche morte pour l’accent aigu, car seul le « e » l’emploie. Il suffit donc, en plus de la touche « é », d’une combinaison pour le « É » ; sur Macintosh et GNU/Linux, taper « é » alors que Verrouiller Maj est actif donne « É ». Bien sûr, l’emploi d’une disposition de clavier autre que l’AZERTY et ergonomique, comme la disposition Dvorak ou la disposition bépo, résout le problème puisque les lettres accentuées ne sont pas considérées différemment des autres lettres de l’alphabet."

It explains that now the best is to add the accent to capital letters, but gives historical reasons that explains why it has not been done for centuries for typographic reasons. It also explain why things begin to change with computers, even if AZERTY keyboards do not make this so easy. I insist on the first sentence ""En français, « l’accent a pleine valeur orthographique »" which means that in french, not putting an accent in a word that contains one is a spelling mistake.

Quoting surfeur51:

Quote:
You have a very interesting explanation of this on this article, unfortunately it is in french. The interesting part for our purpose is this :
<snip>
which means that in french, not putting an accent in a word that contains one is a spelling mistake.

Having not studied French since school, I'll take your word for it! 

Skip,

That last comment (about the "^" in Japanese names) was indeed not relevant to the discussion, just a thought that I had about diacritics used in the database.
Is the use of paragraphs confusing you? Should I state each separate note or thought with a bullet, or a new reply?

Ken has clarified it already, all he needs to do is expand that to Overviews and Titles . In fact it would probably best if his clarification were a part of the early General Rules which would prevent having this same argument when the next "loophole" is found simply include the statement that he made in the forums in the Rules.