Re: Torch vs Flashlight

[HVS]

On 24 Sep 2023, Steve Hayes wrote

> On my Android cell phone there is a function called "Torch", and when
> I press the button it shines a light, which I sometimes use to read
> by.
>
> I was just wondering whether, on such phones sold in the USA, this
> function is labelled "Flashlight", or is it aslo labelled "torch" is
> in non-US English?>

It's not hard-wired in the phone: it depends on what you've set as the
phone's default language.

If you change the default language setting from "English (UK)" to
"English (US)", the label changes from "Torch" to "Flashlight".

--
Cheers, Harvey

[Anton Shepelev]

HVS:

> It's not hard-wired in the phone: it depends on what
> you've set as the phone's default language.
>
> If you change the default language setting from "English
> (UK)" to "English (US)", the label changes from "Torch" to
> "Flashlight".

The quoted message is a duplicate of the one you posted
three days earlier:

http://al.howardknight.net/?ID=169584537600

Kudos for using XNews!

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2023 23:10:14 +0300
Anton Shepelev <anto...@gmail.moc> wrote:

> HVS:
>
> > It's not hard-wired in the phone: it depends on what
> > you've set as the phone's default language.
> >
> > If you change the default language setting from "English
> > (UK)" to "English (US)", the label changes from "Torch" to
> > "Flashlight".
>
> The quoted message is a duplicate of the one you posted
> three days earlier:
>
> http://al.howardknight.net/?ID=169584537600
>
> Kudos for using XNews!
>

I did, but found I had trouble with UTF. So does this NR, but I'd changed
over by then.

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

[HVS]

On 27 Sep 2023, Anton Shepelev wrote

> HVS:
>
>> It's not hard-wired in the phone: it depends on what
>> you've set as the phone's default language.
>>
>> If you change the default language setting from "English
>> (UK)" to "English (US)", the label changes from "Torch" to
>> "Flashlight".
>
> The quoted message is a duplicate of the one you posted
> three days earlier:
>
> http://al.howardknight.net/?ID=169584537600
>
> Kudos for using XNews!

What caused this was that I read and responded to the original post in
alt.english.usage (which I still check out of force of habit), and as I
hadn't seen it in alt.usage.english assumed it had only been posted to
AEU.

A few days later I checked to see if there were any responses, and
spotted that the original message had been cross-posted to
"alt.usage.engilsh" -- which, because of the typo, meant it hadn't made
it to "alt.usage.english".

I corrected the typo for the second posting (and probably should have
added an explanation; apologies.)

(Re: XNews, I found it when I first started reading Usenet (2000-ish)
and managed, with some help from people posting to
news.software.readers, to customise it to work in a way that exactly
suited me. I tried other popular newsreaders like Agent and Gravity to
see what they offered, but have never found anything that's even
remotely as good as my XNews set-up, and have stuck with it ever
since.)

--
Cheers, Harvey

[Anton Shepelev]

Kerr-Mudd, John to Anton Shepelev:

> > Kudos for using XNews!
>
> I did, but found I had trouble with UTF. So does this NR,
> but I'd changed over by then.

UTF is unfortunately abused when there is no need for it.
There are 8-bit encodings for most if not all European
languages. The FidoNet groups in zone 7 (CIS) all use 8-bit
encodings, and so do Usenet gateways into FidoNet. I hate to
see a post in English ruined by Unicode apostrophes, quotes,
and dashes. They are not meant for the plain-text medium of
Usenet.

[Anton Shepelev]

HVS:

> A few days later I checked to see if there were any
> responses, and spotted that the original message had been
> cross-posted to "alt.usage.engilsh"

I make a point of copying critical information from the
headers, rather than retyping it.

> (Re: XNews, I found it when I first started reading Usenet
> (2000-ish) and managed, with some help from people posting
> to news.software.readers, to customise it to work in a way
> that exactly suited me. I tried other popular newsreaders
> like Agent and Gravity to see what they offered, but have
> never found anything that's even remotely as good as my
> XNews set-up, and have stuck with it ever since.)

Exactly. It has a great manual and a very detailed
configuration file.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Anton Shepelev wrote:

> encodings, and so do Usenet gateways into FidoNet. I hate to
> see a post in English ruined by Unicode apostrophes, quotes,
> and dashes. They are not meant for the plain-text medium of
> Usenet.

Det ville da være en skam hvis jeg ikke længere kunne skrive indlæg på
dansk.

You mean that UTF is unnessecary in groups where English is written, and
where there never is even a small quote from other languages?

Can you point me to such a group?

--
Bertel, Denmark

[Anton Shepelev]

Bertel Lund Hansen to Anton Shepelev:

> > encodings, and so do Usenet gateways into FidoNet. I
> > hate to see a post in English ruined by Unicode
> > apostrophes, quotes, and dashes. They are not meant for
> > the plain-text medium of Usenet.
>

> Det ville da vaere en skam hvis jeg ikke laengere kunne
> skrive indlaeg pa dansk.

>
> You mean that UTF is unnessecary in groups where English
> is written, and where there never is even a small quote
> from other languages?

No, only where English (French, Russian, German...) is the
primary language, because 8-bit encodings support all of
them. Bilingual posts with the Latin alphabet may use the
Latin1 endcoding; if a mixture of the Cyrillic and Latin
alphabets is needed, there are Russian (Ukrainian,
Bulgarian) 8-bit encodings -- well supported by the Usenet
protocol, server software, and great old ante~~deluvian~~UTF
fossilised newsreaders.

The tiny proportion of texts where extended character sets
are reauired, can be rendered in ASCII with acceptable
accuracy. Similartly, no one complains that IRC does not
suport images large text messages, because the need share
them is rare, making justified the use of special tools such
as pastebins and image hostings.

> Can you point me to such a group?

Try comp.lang.c . I don't remember a situation where
anything but plain 7-bit ASCII was needed in that group.

[Anton Shepelev]

Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:

> Det ville da være en skam hvis jeg ikke længere kunne skrive
> indlæg på dansk.

This messaage should correctly represetn you text,
yet without any UTF, but via the ISO-8859-1 8-bit
encoding.

[Anton Shepelev]

en: I wrote:
ru: я писал:

> This messaage should correctly represetn you text, yet
> without any UTF, but via the ISO-8859-1 8-bit encoding.

And so it does:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Now, /this/ message should encode Russian and English
text without UTF. Читается?

[Phil Carmody]

Anton Shepelev <anto...@gmail.moc> writes:
> HVS:
>
>> It's not hard-wired in the phone: it depends on what
>> you've set as the phone's default language.
>>
>> If you change the default language setting from "English
>> (UK)" to "English (US)", the label changes from "Torch" to
>> "Flashlight".
>
> The quoted message is a duplicate of the one you posted
> three days earlier:

So, why did you bother responding to it? What new exchange of knowledge
did you expect to take place?

Phil
--
We are no longer hunters and nomads. No longer awed and frightened, as we have
gained some understanding of the world in which we live. As such, we can cast
aside childish remnants from the dawn of our civilization.
-- NotSanguine on SoylentNews, after Eugen Weber in /The Western Tradition/

[Anton Shepelev]

Phil Carmody to Anton Shepelev:

> > The quoted message is a duplicate of the one you posted
> > three days earlier:
>
> So, why did you bother responding to it? What new
> exchange of knowledge did you expect to take place?

None, but I acted upon the possiblity that my post might
prove useful if:

1. the duplicate is due to a glitch is on HVS's side,
2. it is fixable, and
3. HVS is not aware of it.

[Dingbat]

I found flashlight a weird name for what I knew as a torch. It was apposite once,
when the light source was turned on for a short time and turned off. The initial
technology didn't allow the light to remain on for long.

In US English, when you fancy and are devoted to someone, you carry a torch for them.
<https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/carry%20a%20torch%20%28for%29>

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, October 1, 2023 at 12:20:47 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:

> I found flashlight a weird name for what I knew as a torch. It was apposite once,
> when the light source was turned on for a short time and turned off. The initial
> technology didn't allow the light to remain on for long.

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe calls the device a "flash," between
about 1939 and 1956. (When his early stories were reprinted, he changed
the name of some of his detectives to Marlowe, but they don't really count.)

> In US English, when you fancy and are devoted to someone, you carry a torch for them.
> <https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/carry%20a%20torch%20%28for%29>

He had an English Classical education but his family returned to the US
perhaps in relation to the Great War. He served in the Canadian army then.

[HVS]

On 01 Oct 2023, Dingbat wrote

Indeed; hence "torch song".

Is that use of "torch" noticeably US/Leftpondian? (Collins doesn't
flag it up as such.)

--
Cheers, Harvey

[Dingbat]

Dunno. When I hadn't heard a term in India and first heard it in the US, I
assumed that it was American, perhaps not always correctly.

I first heard a dastard called a fucker (male) or fucking bitch (female)
in the US. It sounded gross. It was Dastard or Fucking (intensifier) Bastard
in India but the latter applied only to males.