Summary: de-DE-1996 is better than de-1996-DE

[J.Wilkes]

On 26 Apr 2002 at 13:30, John Cowan wrote:

> J.Wilkes scripsit:
> 
> > The works of Benn, Rilke, Fried, Jandl, Arp, Arno Schmidt and many more will 
> > simply not work anymore with the 1996 orthography. When read in a 1996 
> > orthography scope, they get skewed and distorted; and their beauty vandalised.
> 
> The works of Goethe and Schiller become disgusting and illegible when transcribed
> into the 1901 orthography, and even worse when typeset in Antiqua.  Nothing
> but the authors' original Suetterlin handwriting (in facsimile) will do
> in order to properly capture their undistorted poetic vision, and he who
> writes "sei" for "sey", or "tun" for "thun", is damned to orthographic
> Hell forthwith.

Aye. 

;^)

Please excuse my outburst. My home is language, not country.

And to answer without joking: Goethe and Schiller would probably not object to 
transcription of many of their works, since the content was often more important to 
them than form. Both were not meticulous workers, but rather part of the "Sturm und 
Drang" era. (detailed discussion elsewhere, please)
On the other hand, some of the poets I mentioned spent hours over single words and 
even punctuation; in this case, I think it is obvious that any change will distort what 
was intended.
Changing the punctuation in legal documents over which many persons spend many 
hours, honing the words and their interpretation, will likely have adverse effects as 
well.

I hope this explanation is more acceptable.

Johannes Wilkes
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