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Literally what do you think the words “some degree” mean to you personally? Posters have been able to pinpoint the number of fluent speakers, can you give me a

Literally what do you think the words “some degree” mean to you personally? Posters have been able to pinpoint the number of fluent speakers, can you give me a ballpark to how many people matter and how many don’t matter? This article about rendering text appropriately has taken such a fun turn into sorting folks into groups that “matter” and “don’t matter”? If being rigid about these numbers is so important, how many people that don’t matter today might matter next year? How many people are learning arabic script? How many might want to look up something written in arabic without it being rendered in absolute nonsense?

Dylan16807 4y ago
> Literally what do you think the words “some degree” mean to you personally? I answered that in my first post! I can read a tiny tiny bit of Arabic. That puts me into the literal "some degree" group, but I am also definitely in the not-mattering group, because rendering mistakes with Arabic will not cause me any problems with reading. > Posters have been able to pinpoint the number of fluent speakers, can you give me a ballpark to how many people matter and how many don’t matter? Have they? But I don't have numbers, I'm just saying that "fluent" is too small and "some degree" is too big. > This article about rendering text appropriately has taken such a fun turn into sorting folks into groups that “matter” and “don’t matter”? Are you offended that I classify myself as not mattering in this very specific context? You don't have to make it sound like I'm saying people don't matter in general, jeez. > If being rigid about these numbers is so important If a number is worth busting out to make a point, it's worth being correct. > how many people that don’t matter today might matter next year? How many people are learning arabic script? What's your point? If the number changes, then use the new number. Don't use a wrong number because it might change later. Or if you have an expected future number, label it as such. > How many might want to look up something written in arabic without it being rendered in absolute nonsense? A lot of those people aren't even inside the "some degree" group, so now you're making a different argument. I'd rather not start any new tangents at this point, if you don't mind.
- braingenious 4y ago
  > What's your point? My point is that you’re trying to use some sort of odd pedantic mark trick to shift the conversation from your experience of “There is a group that I personally don’t care about” to “Math dictates that this is not actually a problem worth addressing.” Your position that the important takeaway here is actually the importance of scrutinizing pointless minutiae rather than text rendering being fundamentally broken isn’t empirically based. Your entire argument is “look at how clever I am!”, which is fundamentally off-topic when talking about rendering text properly. Like lol, how are people supposed to learn the script if their examples are all messed up? As a maths genious surely you could see the issue with how “impacted people” is somewhere between “fluent people” and “fluent people plus an unknown number of others.” What hard number did you land at when adding unknown variable x to the number of fluent speakers you googled?
  - bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
    > Your entire argument is “look at how clever I am!”, which is fundamentally off-topic when talking about rendering text properly. I think this is a really uncharitable read of this conversation. This thread has been about the veracity and the relevance of the author's claim that "two billion people can read Arabic to some degree". I don't think anyone is trying to refute the author's conclusion that Arabic text rendering is important. I also don't think anyone is trying to show off how clever they are. Personally, I agree with the author's conclusion, and I thought the post was really neat! But I also think the 2 billion statistic weakened their argument -- it's better to omit a statistic than include the wrong one.
    - braingenious 4y ago
      > This thread has been about the veracity and the relevance of the author's claim that "two billion people can read Arabic to some degree". This is not really true. You tried to center your conclusion that your math was better than the author’s math while distracting from the topic of rendering text properly. This thread has been about you insisting that people listen to your math and not discuss rendering text properly. lol this thread has been about how clever you are, _not_ rendering text properly.

Dylan16807 4y ago

> Literally what do you think the words “some degree” mean to you personally? I answered that in my first post! I can read a tiny tiny bit of Arabic. That puts me into the literal "some degree" group, but I am also definitely in the not-mattering group, because rendering mistakes with Arabic will not cause me any problems with reading. > Posters have been able to pinpoint the number of fluent speakers, can you give me a ballpark to how many people matter and how many don’t matter? Have they? But I don't have numbers, I'm just saying that "fluent" is too small and "some degree" is too big. > This article about rendering text appropriately has taken such a fun turn into sorting folks into groups that “matter” and “don’t matter”? Are you offended that I classify myself as not mattering in this very specific context? You don't have to make it sound like I'm saying people don't matter in general, jeez. > If being rigid about these numbers is so important If a number is worth busting out to make a point, it's worth being correct. > how many people that don’t matter today might matter next year? How many people are learning arabic script? What's your point? If the number changes, then use the new number. Don't use a wrong number because it might change later. Or if you have an expected future number, label it as such. > How many might want to look up something written in arabic without it being rendered in absolute nonsense? A lot of those people aren't even inside the "some degree" group, so now you're making a different argument. I'd rather not start any new tangents at this point, if you don't mind.

braingenious 4y ago
> What's your point? My point is that you’re trying to use some sort of odd pedantic mark trick to shift the conversation from your experience of “There is a group that I personally don’t care about” to “Math dictates that this is not actually a problem worth addressing.” Your position that the important takeaway here is actually the importance of scrutinizing pointless minutiae rather than text rendering being fundamentally broken isn’t empirically based. Your entire argument is “look at how clever I am!”, which is fundamentally off-topic when talking about rendering text properly. Like lol, how are people supposed to learn the script if their examples are all messed up? As a maths genious surely you could see the issue with how “impacted people” is somewhere between “fluent people” and “fluent people plus an unknown number of others.” What hard number did you land at when adding unknown variable x to the number of fluent speakers you googled?
- bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
  > Your entire argument is “look at how clever I am!”, which is fundamentally off-topic when talking about rendering text properly. I think this is a really uncharitable read of this conversation. This thread has been about the veracity and the relevance of the author's claim that "two billion people can read Arabic to some degree". I don't think anyone is trying to refute the author's conclusion that Arabic text rendering is important. I also don't think anyone is trying to show off how clever they are. Personally, I agree with the author's conclusion, and I thought the post was really neat! But I also think the 2 billion statistic weakened their argument -- it's better to omit a statistic than include the wrong one.
  - braingenious 4y ago
    > This thread has been about the veracity and the relevance of the author's claim that "two billion people can read Arabic to some degree". This is not really true. You tried to center your conclusion that your math was better than the author’s math while distracting from the topic of rendering text properly. This thread has been about you insisting that people listen to your math and not discuss rendering text properly. lol this thread has been about how clever you are, _not_ rendering text properly.