From owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 27 13:38:22 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 347D737B401; Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:38:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from sccrmhc02.attbi.com (sccrmhc02.attbi.com [204.127.202.62]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0ED0843FA3; Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:38:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from swear@attbi.com) Received: from localhost.localdomain (unknown[12.242.158.67]) by sccrmhc02.attbi.com (sccrmhc02) with ESMTP id <2003032721382000200jcr8ue>; Thu, 27 Mar 2003 21:38:20 +0000 Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.localdomain (8.12.6/8.12.5) with ESMTP id h2RLbQ5F014169; Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:37:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from swear@attbi.com) Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localdomain (8.12.6/8.12.5/Submit) id h2RLbFWK014164; Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:37:15 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from swear@attbi.com) X-Authentication-Warning: localhost.localdomain: jojo set sender to swear@attbi.com using -f To: Martin Karlsson References: <20030326050104.GA1514@c-303a70d5.bredbandsbolaget.se> <20030326185416.GH18515@gothmog.gr> From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: 27 Mar 2003 13:37:15 -0800 In-Reply-To: <20030326185416.GH18515@gothmog.gr> Message-ID: <9ohe9oo5is.e9o@localhost.localdomain> Lines: 46 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-33.2 required=5.0 tests=EMAIL_ATTRIBUTION,IN_REP_TO,QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT, RCVD_IN_UNCONFIRMED_DSBL,REFERENCES,REPLY_WITH_QUOTES, USER_AGENT_GNUS_UA,X_AUTH_WARNING autolearn=ham version=2.50 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.50 (1.173-2003-02-20-exp) cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org cc: Giorgos Keramidas Subject: Re: quotation marks in HTML output X-BeenThere: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Documentation project List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 21:38:25 -0000 Giorgos Keramidas writes: > It's a long standing typographical convention, which I do prefer in > all printed material, given the proper fonts and letter-form. Alas, > today, most of the fonts that people use have these ugly, stupid marks > that look bizarre instead of proper back-quotes and short, thin, > vertical lines instead of proper right quotes. I think it was a good idea to change the glyphs for the ASCII characters so that 39 (') and 34 (") are vertical and 96 (`) looks like whatever a grave accent is supposed to look like (which some think should be symmetric with an acute accent). What I think IS stupid is that the Unicode people name the vertical thing "apostrophe" -- which it no longer is. (You're supposed to use the "single right quote" to get an apostrophe.) > This makes ``example'' look terrible. Most notably, in HTML browsers, > the right part looks some times like ``example" which is hurting my > eyes and looks very unpleasant. Mine converts them to "real" left and right double quotes, which look good. But I'd rather it give me what the author asked for, especially when the author didn't use them in matching pairs. > For these reasons, I'd probably support switching to double quotes > like "...." for HTML output. But only for HTML output. Unless the FDP is trying to support some REALLY old browsers, HTML should use the "“" and "”" (Unicode) entities for left and right double quotation marks (with "‘" and "’" for the single versions). The FDP should not support such old browsers. I'm fairly sure that all Netscape and M$ browsers less than 5 years old support these four Unicode entities. As for text format files, I've never liked ``this'', even in the good old days when the glyphs were often symmetrical; today it's usually uglier, even on most Unix/X11 systems. "This" looks better, even when the quotes are both right-leaning curly ones, which they seldom were in the good old days and which they almost never are today. Martin, if you're planning to take this discussion further than those in last year's discussion did, please read http://www.freebsd.org/internal/doceng.html, which says that changes are made by consensus. That obviously can't be true, but you can probably read between the lines well enough to inform your efforts. Good luck.