X-system vs H-system

martinluan
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X-system vs H-system

Postby martinluan » 2015-05-15, 22:52

Many people feel difficult to type the the circumflex letters. Since very beginning of Esperanto development, people start to use different ways to replace those letters. One common solution is X-system by adding x. So the new letters look like cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux, etc. Another solution is H-system, by adding letter h, to form ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, etc, ŭ same as u. The latter was rejected by many people since h is an existing letter and merging ŭ and u causes some ambiguity. It seems X-system is preferred by most groups, in internet and prints when the circumflex fonts are not available.

Personally I dislike the X-system. It breaks the normal word form in a weird way and makes the appearance un-natural. The alternative system is just a temporary replacement and it functions to bring people convenience not to add more discomfort. There might be another way of using apostrophe ' instead of x, which actually makes it worse.

As per H-system, I prefer the adjusted version, ch, gh, kh, zh, sh, and w. It is not the straightforward way to add h to form new letters, but the spellings match the traditional use of Latin letters and are easy to read. Almost all people could understand immediately what they represent in circumflex letters. I ever thought of using y instead of j and, using j to replacing gh, etc, but that changes too much and add more potential ambiguity. Currently I stay with the adjusted H-system mentioned above.

Which way are you using when circumflex letters are not available from your keyboard?

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Swalf
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Re: X-system vs H-system

Postby Swalf » 2015-05-19, 17:21

At first, I believe that currently situations where diacritics can't be used are fortunately rare with new software. Whereas Gnu\Linux systems can use them from long long time ago, now Android, Windows, Apple can use them too, natively or by third part software. Some websites permit insertion of Esperanto letters if there isn't other method for do this.

Anyway in other case I prefear x-system if the "interlocutor" is mainly computer (for example if I name song for my car audio system that support only Ascii characters or if I use program for translation).
Otherwise I tend to uniform me with the style in use, aesthetically maybe h-system is better than x or other surrogate systems for diacritics, but however is a questionable thing.
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loqu
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Re: X-system vs H-system

Postby loqu » 2015-05-19, 17:53

I've always preferred the X-system because it doesn't create ambiguity as the H-system does. Plus, the thing that the <x> looks alien only happens at first, then you get used to it and that impression goes away.

Fortunately it's been some years now that I can write with circumflexes easily. ĉĝĥĵŝŭ
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Re: X-system vs H-system

Postby Swalf » 2015-05-20, 7:53

Anyway I've seen some other systems for diacritics surrogate.
For example:




Ĉirkaŭaĵo
C^irkauaj^o
^Cirkaua^jo
C_irkauaj_o
C'irkau'aj'o
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Re: X-system vs H-system

Postby razlem » 2015-05-20, 8:01

^ That last one might cause some confusion, as Zamenhof originally intended for each morpheme to be separated by an apostrophe and it's present in older works.
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Re: X-system vs H-system

Postby Swalf » 2015-05-20, 10:51

I agree, it might generate confusion.
We use it for split an external proper noun from esperanto suffixes. For example:
"Mi uzas Android'on”
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Re: X-system vs H-system

Postby ShounenRonin » 2016-04-21, 23:50

I don't see anything wrong with the H system. After all, English also has a ch and an sh, while h is already a letter.

Ch also looks better than cx


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