Bug#235759: libc6: iconv's replacement for "German quotes in UTF-8" to latin1

[Jens Nachtigall <nachtigall@web.de>]

Package: libc6
Version: 2.3.2.ds1-11
Severity: minor
Tags: l10n


There are two different sets of quotes in German:
- the so-called German quotes (quite similar to English quotes), 
which are part of UTF-8: "„" and "“"
- and the so called French quotes (guillemets), which are also part 
of ISO 8859-1: "»" and "«"

Both sets of quotes are used by German translators.

The German quotes can only be seen with an UTF-8 enabled locale. If 
UTF-8 is not enabled, iconv replaces "„" with ",," and "“" with 
""".
$> echo "0: e2 80 9e e2 80 9c 0a" | xxd -r | iconv --from=UTF-8 \ 
--to=latin1//translit
,,"

It is consensus amongst German translators that this replacement 
strategy is unappropriate. It would be better to replace the German 
quotes with the French ones, that is  "„" should be replaced by "»" 
and "“" by "«" in an environment which is unable of using UTF-8.
$> echo "0: e2 80 9e e2 80 9c 0a" | xxd -r | iconv --from=UTF-8 \ 
--to=latin1//translit
»«

For reference see this discussion of the German i18n team (in 
German): 
http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-german/2004/debian-l10n-german-200401/msg00024.html