Some precisions about umlauts:

First -  As Franck says, in French, as well as in Spanish and I think in all
other Latin derived languages, it is called diaeresis, and I am not sure it
marks the same linguistic features as in German.

Second - The way Patty indicates to get some diachritical marks works
perfectly, and it is not HTML, just plain ASCII text: you can test it.

Third - Unfortunately I don't speak German, but I always thought that umlaut
was an alternative way to indicate some diptongues, so you can write
"Röding" or "Roeding" and both forms are perfectly correct. Same thing
occurs to German beta, wich is the same as a double "s". And this is not a
colateral effect of computer technology: you can find it in many printed
text, modern or old. Surely there must be some German speaker out there who
could clarify this point.

Fourth - I think that the use of diachritical marks is not allowed by the
ICZN. Sure, not for species names (I'm unsure about authors names). Anyway,
the general trend is not to use them, wich leads to the fact that many of
the authors names other than English are really bad written (curiously,
English and Latin coincide at this point: none of them use this marks). Use
of diptongues instead of umlauts allows to avoid this errors for many German
names, so it could be advisable.

Best regards,

Alfonso Pina
Málaga, Spain
[log in to unmask]
www.eumed.net/malakos



----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Grebneff" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 9:15 AM
Subject: Re: Umlaut


> >Dear Linda and other English-speaking people,
> >
> >Yes, that is correct Röding is the same as Roeding, for the time when
> >computers would not do umlauts and other signs. Now, they all do, and it
> >just takes a little figuring out. Each program has it's own way of
> >inserting these,
>
> Funny, all the other lists I'm on quite rightly reject any message
> with HTML content; styled fonts require HTML. So for me, annotying
> though it is, no umlauts (but I refuse to add an e instead!). Eudora
> Light doesn't have the option anyway...
>
> I can't do umlauts with Macdraw either, which I use for labels.
> --
> Andrew Grebneff
> 165 Evans St, Dunedin 9001, New Zealand
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Seashell, Macintosh, VW/Toyota van nut