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  #1  
Old Apr 7, 2010, 07:43 AM
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Medina Medina is offline
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Default Punctuation when dealing with track titles

Hi, I'm going to fix the Japanese tracklists as I just go about my own collection (since I typically use the original Japanese tracknames for tags and such). I'd just like to be clear on VGMdb's conventions, if there are any accepted conventions, for things such as punctuation. There is a difference between a 1 and a 1, an ! and an !, etc. Even ellipses can be written as ... or ・・・ or … so which font is preferred?

Personally, I would use the standard Roman font when dealing with Roman characters (mostly in English), while if it was in Japanese, I would use the Japanese punctuation symbols. Some examples:

ブラッドプール~カサンドラ (used Japanese wavedash)
本当に子供なんだから…。 (used Japanese ellipses and full stop)
戦い2(UNRELEASED TRACK) (used Japanese "2" but Roman parentheses to enclose Roman font)
砂の城-The Castle of Sand- (used Roman dashes to enclose Roman font)

This is how I would do it personally, but if you have a perferred method, you could just let me know about it before I do it some other way. It's just to have a consistency at least in what I do, and perhaps creating a standard, since I might as well make corrections when I find errors.
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  #2  
Old Apr 7, 2010, 08:02 AM
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How you describe it here is exactly how we enforce it here, with the exception of the syntax to enclose Roman font -- I don't think we've paid close attention or given much thought to which dash or parenthesis to use to enclose Roman text in a Japanese title. This might be worth discussing further.

Note I won't claim that every entry in the database satisfies this at present, but we're working towards that goal.

This reminds me that I need to get rolling on our Standards discussions.
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Old Apr 7, 2010, 09:46 AM
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Now I am confused, wasn't the policy to have the Japanese tracklists *exactly* like the scans say? At least this is how I understand it was and I've added/fixed stuff accordingly...

And I think that's the most logical thing to do -- just copy it verbatim (otherwise you could argue if you can fix symbols why not Engrish and so on...). Some albums use 2 and ~, other 2 and ~. If that's what the album makers used just transmit it here.
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Old Apr 7, 2010, 10:17 AM
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But it can be virtually impossible to distinguish the two in text.

For example, when is it appropriate to use Japanese font for Roman letters? The .hack//GAME MUSIC Perfect Collection tracklist uses Roman font for the same names found in the Limited Edition, which uses the Japanese font. Obviously this isn't an example of consistency, but a question of: which is right? How do we try and determine when somebody is using a Japanese font and a Roman font?

This is just the thing I'm wondering. Maybe with letters and numbers it's a bit easier to eyeball the two and try to make a judgment, but trying to tell the difference between a + and a + can get ridiculous. It's probably hard to tell even here in my post, and when it's in printed tracklist, you can't copy and paste to see which one it is, so it's virtually impossible. This is why I'm trying to assume that when Roman letters are written, Roman symbols were used, and when Japanese characters are present, Japanese font is used. Of course, if we want all punctuation symbols to be in one font or another, that's fine by me too, I'm just trying to get the convention down.

Last edited by Medina; Apr 7, 2010 at 10:27 AM.
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Old Apr 7, 2010, 01:23 PM
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Well, definitely sometimes it's indistinguible so we could use Roman/Japanese chars following your standard (that's usually used). But when they are distinguible I think we should keep them like they are for accuracy. For example, it's not uncommon to see "roman chars、roman chars" with a Japanese (inverted) comma, I don't think we should 'fix' it with regular commas since they are not 'wrong'.

Also remember many tracklists here are copied from official sites and such and are fairly accurate (many others are still incorrect of course). In your .hack example, indeed it's impossible to tell them apart (I'd default to Roman anyway). But in the official site they use Roman letters and the scans in both releases seem to use the same font, so I'd fix the limited edition with Roman letters (but if the official site said otherwise I wouldn't). Same with the track "ev19_1", due to the monospaced font it's hard to say if it's a _ (roman) or a _ (Japanese), but since the official site uses _ (roman) I'd change it too.

Oh and I'm not saying we should use this or that in our tags, just that imo it's better for accuracy reasons to have it here as close as it's printed then adjust, just my opinion (this is all for Japanese tracklists, in case anybody is lost).
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Old Apr 7, 2010, 01:44 PM
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Yes, because I don't care to change English tracklists.

Well, what you say makes sense, I was just asking about some sort of global consistency I guess. What I mean is that many soundtracks do not have an official site, and looking at a scan / booklet can leave things up to interpretation. Then what do we do? Also many official sites will mix Roman punctuation with Japanese characters. My suggestion was just to offer global consistency, since a punctuation mark is ultimately a punctuation mark at the end of the day.

Mainly, I'm not looking to go around and fix a bunch of punctuation marks. What I'm trying to do is fix incorrect kanji / kana, but in that process it would be nice to know what kind of punctuation marks I should use when changing a track containing punctuation marks, otherwise one change begets another later on.

Also, of course tags aren't an issue because that's not even database related, tags are personal and who cares what anyone else does.

Okay thanks Dag, I'll wait for some more feedback from others / staff. After some form of consensus I'll get started (no hurry of course).
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Old Apr 7, 2010, 02:30 PM
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Yeah when no official site/poor scans/not sure I follow what you posted, it's all fine. Just that, when there is enough evidence for certain symbol is used I think it should prevail over any standard.
Like you say I usually only fix them along kanji/kana, no need to obsess over punctuation anyway.
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  #8  
Old Apr 7, 2010, 02:39 PM
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I may have misunderstood slightly, but yeah, we should follow the Japanese punctuation in the Japanese tracklists, but always convert it over to Latin in the western tracklists.

For text font like this "toppage" though, it may be a different matter. I think that in another post, Blah my have mentioned some rationale for not considering those as a separate character set -- it may have been something along the lines of how those were only included so that the this character set would be able to show Latin characters, which are seemingly common in Japan, and there was no intention for them to stand on their own, or to have their own function (unlike the punctuation, each of which has its own usage which may or may not align with the same character in our punctuation.) There is certainly no uniformity - for the same tracklist, some sites will use these characters, while others don't.

The jury is still out on what we should do, so I usually don't mess with them either way.
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Old Apr 7, 2010, 03:04 PM
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Okay, I agree about Japanese text for Roman letters (I think it applies to numbers too). Of course some characters like the interpunct or full stop should be honored, others it didn't seem to matter so much. But, I'll try to keep them just in Japanese font, or leave them alone whenever possible. Sorry if sometimes I don't come off clear!

Obviously, we also want to honor spacing too. I just never really considered websites as a source of verification, I always went off the booklet. That changes things, like if there's no space in between a word and parenthesis, like the example 戦い2(UNRELEASED TRACK). If there's a space in the official website, which do we favor?

And I don't suppose I need to post about every change I make, that seems to be a waste of server space (unless you like that sort of thing).

Anyway, I'll make adjustments to obvious things first.
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Old Apr 13, 2010, 04:01 PM
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On the subject of spacing, which is what strikes me when I see tracklistings here.. as I was looking at the SD4 OST tracklist, "Pop,pop,pop" has no spaces on the booklet, yet it was spaced out in the list.

I wonder if the person just ignored this or if they didn't see the booklet, or I am not sure exactly what, but I changed it to match the booklet.. but I figure we want to honor it. I hope, anyway, when it's really obviously like this. I just wonder why I see this sometimes, especially a lot of tracklisting with a ~ (~word) in them, but I see it in Japanese, and when the tracklisting is in English, they add a space (~ word ~)

Oh well, I think at least when it's in english, it should be easier to decide.
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  #11  
Old Apr 14, 2010, 02:49 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mercenary09 View Post
On the subject of spacing, which is what strikes me when I see tracklistings here.. as I was looking at the SD4 OST tracklist, "Pop,pop,pop" has no spaces on the booklet, yet it was spaced out in the list.

I wonder if the person just ignored this or if they didn't see the booklet, or I am not sure exactly what, but I changed it to match the booklet.. but I figure we want to honor it. I hope, anyway, when it's really obviously like this. I just wonder why I see this sometimes, especially a lot of tracklisting with a ~ (~word) in them, but I see it in Japanese, and when the tracklisting is in English, they add a space (~ word ~)
Whatever the reason for the incorrect spacing in the tracklist here (it might not have originated from a first-hand (i.e. album or scans) source, etc), we should indeed follow what's written. I made the same correction for track 4 of the same disc.
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