Bug#235759: Bug#228486: More info about #228486 / #235759
On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 13:17:13 +0200 "Thiemo Seufer"
<ica2_ts@csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:
>It shows how important guillemots are in everydays typing. And IMHO
>everydays reading should use the same characters.
I think this argument is somewhat a red herring. I see a lot of people in
this thread calling " an english quote; this is incorrect--a proper set of
quotes in english is curved one way at the start of the quote and another
way at the end. In fact, many word processing programs will insert the
proper opening or closing quote when you type the " or ' key on the
keyboard. I imagine that german word processors can (and do) operate the
same way.
What's the point of all this? First, the symbol on the keyboard does not
necessarily correspond with the character the user wants to use. Second,
the absence of a character on a keyboard does not indicate that it is
unimportant. Third, ASCII discriminates against proper english typographic
quotes as much as german. Finally, english translations also contain an
ugly and stupid looking conversion of quotes using punctuation characters
that have their own seperate meaning. It would be nice if everything used
proper quotes, but stupid-looking quotes aren't the end of the
world--english speaking users have been living with it for years.
Mike Stone
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