[San-Diego-pm] accents

[Joel Fentin]

Chris Radcliff wrote:

 > Hi everyone,
 >
 > Just my $0.02:  This list prides itself on having a good attitude toward
 > questions; we're all champions of the idea that anyone can ask anything
 > and receive a civil answer.  Specifically, we avoid the kind of
 > dismissive or hurtful comment that one would find when asking a newbie
 > or "obvious" question on other lists.
 >
 > It's time to extend that courtesy to answers, as well.  Tkil took the
 > time and effort to lay out a detailed, thoughtful approach to Joel's
 > problem, and it was dismissed rather rudely.  If it was me, I'd think
 > twice before answering any plea in the future, and that's probably not
 > where we want this group to head.
 >
 > Cheers,
 > ~chris

I don't intend rudeness and I certainly don't intend to do anything to 
discourage people from answering my questions. I am very thankful for 
the answers I get.
==================================
Tkil wrote:

 >>>>>>"Joel" == Joel Fentin <joel at fentin.com> writes:
 >
 >
 > Joel> From that point in your email onward, I stopped understanding.
 >
 > I suspect that you actually stopped reading, or stopped trying to
 > understand.

To some extent, that is true. It seemed overwhelming.
==================================
ITEMS:

1. I do not ask a question of this list unless I have been struggling 
with an issue at least two hours. Usually much more. I try experiments 
with my code, I look in my books, and on the web.

2. When I am stuck, there several other questions that arise:

   A. Do I invent my way out of the problem, or find out if there is 
already a mainstream way of solving this?

   B. How much time do I spend educating myself on a specialty just to 
see if I can even use that specialty?

   C. Do I stop all forward motion on my project and in essence learn a 
new specialty?

   D. If I stop my project, and learn the new specialty, will I ever use 
what I learn again? If not, I won't REALLY learn it. Not without daily 
doses of it.

3. I am constantly learning new things. Sometimes my projects corner me 
into learning them. Sometimes I pick an area of interest to me. And 
sometimes I just glaze over.

4. We all have different ways of learning and of keeping our interest. 
Mine tends to start with the application example and to learn the 
underlying rules from it. Others do this In reverse.
==================================
My issue revolved around 12 conversions:

a = á
A = Á
e = é
E = É
i = í
I = Í
o = ó
O = Ó
u = ú
U = Ú
n = ñ
N = Ñ

1. Since I am not dealing with Portuguese or German, umlauts and left 
leaning accents are not my issue.

2. The ideal solution would have been a modifier that does to accents 
what the i modifier does to case. It doesn't seem to exist.

3. One solution someone sent me was to loop through a hash 12 (or 6) 
times making substitutions. As simple as that sounds, I was quite slow 
to grasp the concept.

4. Another suggested solution was very fell-swoop if the host will 
install a Perl module. (They don't always.)

5. And one "solution" involved learning about ISO-8859-1, CP1252, 
Unicode, Unicode::Normalize qw( NFD reorder ), and more. I confess, I 
felt that if I went down that road, I would be a long time returning. 
And perhaps returning with very little. It seemed overwhelming.
=================================
Much of what I am saying is that my own personal psychology comes into 
play here.

-- 
Joel Fentin       tel: 760-749-8863    FAX: 760-749-8864
Email me:         http://fentin.com/me/ContactMe.html
Biz Website:      http://fentin.com
Personal Website: http://fentin.com/me