Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2022 08:59:42 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com>, freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org, postmaster@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Posting Netiquette [ref: Threads "look definitely like" unreadable mess. Handbook project.] Message-ID: <20220623085942.ee7b8f30.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20220623063304.GB59423@eureka.lemis.com> References: <CAD2Ti2_GFxRzAjgSwf55tC9c3jSUAzeR42xzhUgG87QZ7JT5_g@mail.gmail.com> <20220623030118.GA59423@eureka.lemis.com> <20220623060320.aad6a631.freebsd@edvax.de> <20220623063304.GB59423@eureka.lemis.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 16:33:04 +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Thursday, 23 June 2022 at 6:03:20 +0200, Polytropon wrote: > > On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 13:01:18 +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > >> [...] I personally find that prepending > >> ">" to the original message works best. Leaving white space after > >> the "> " and leave empty lines between your text and the original > >> text both make the result more readable. > > > > Prepending what? After the what? Seems there is a charset mismatch. > > Ugh. Yes, you're right. Good. I thought I could have broken my MUA. ;-) > > Or is it just my MUA displaying nonsense (which would be new to me). > > Oh the joy of UTF-8... ;-) > > What happened here was that I copied the text from the (UTF-8) web > page into a text that was (I think) implicitly ISO 8859. My copy of > the message also shows this mutilation. But strangely, replying to > this message, I find that the text has been automatically recovered. > It doesn't stay that way: in the editor it looks correct, but the MUA > displays it incorrectly. The issue was with the quotation marks, and > it should look correct above now. It does. Now the "smart quotes" (I think this is what people call them, in fact, they are the near-typographic equivalents of proper english double quotes) have been replaced by the common " symbol. For more confusion, consult Mr. Lampampatildelampampsuppez, Schlatilde-Fracter-Street in 10707 Berlin. ;-) > > Otherwise, I completely agree to the concept that form and content > > should match, and that form can help a lot to improve readability > > and accessibility of information in general. > > And people shouldn't make the kind of mess that I managed to make :-( We _all_ have stupid fat fingers sometimes. :-) > Does anybody have an opinion on character set recommendations? I > think we should ask for UTF-8 if at all possible. Depends. For maximum interoperability and accessibility, US-ASCII is the lowest common denominator. So when we use quotes, "..." should be sufficient. If needed, ``...'' is possible, but probably not a good choice, especially as it's 2 characters where 1 is fully sufficient (and does exist). The same goes for single quotes often used instead of apostrophes, where we commonly use ' for. In German, if you don't what to use "this", you can use ,,that'', but as you will agree, that isn't correct (as it's two commas and two apostrophes, not quotes), and can cause confusion. It becomes worse when you need ,single quotes'. In real typography, this is solved (for example in LaTeX \glqq and \grqq or their shorthands "` and "' from the "german" package, as well as \glq and \grq for single quotes). Back on topic: If UTF-8 is used, it should be preferred over ISO-8859, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15 and so on. But it should only be used where applicable. You know you can use a lof of "lookalikes" as UTF-8 knows a lot of whitespace cheracters, hyphens and dashes, and so on, so it should be used only in cases where (a) US-ASCII doesn't provide the required symbol, or (b) the UTF-8 symbol is preferred for a valid reason. That is at least a suitable approach for e-mail (mailing lists) and for the web. It is, however, probably not good for manpages which should be US-ASCII so they will work even in non-UTF-8 real text mode (I mean sc, not vt, still found on servers with local console access). Keep in mind that text is not typography, UTF-8 is no replacement for proper typography, the web isn't pixel-perfect, and both humans _and_ machines need to read and process it. Please also consider those users who depend on the ability of using a voice screen reader or Braille output: Those devices often cannot handle fancy "typography" (quotes intended) and then say / display nonsense. At least that's my "old people" opinion. ;-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20220623085942.ee7b8f30.freebsd>