Re: Bug#428195: krb5: [debconf_rewrite] Debconf templates review

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> writes:

> The sources I found (and IIRC the discussion we had) mention that
> British English uses LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK (U+2018), and RIGHT
> SINGLE QUOTATION MARK (U+2019). American English is said to use the same
> but double quotation marks (U+201C, and U+201D) are used for first level
> quotations.

Yes, correct.  This is a UK vs. US difference.  In the US, one writes:

    "The quotation should be 'last to go,'" he said.

In the UK, as I understand it, one writes:

    'The quotation should be "last to go,"' he said.

There's no strong reason to prefer one over the other; it's just a matter
of convention which unfortunately differs depending on the side of the
pond.  (There are some weak reasons, such as " not being ambiguous with an
ASCII apostrophe.)

> As we have "agreed" to follow American English conventions, that maybe
> means we should use double quotation marks. I'd still recommend to use
> the simple ones (") and not U+201C and U+201D as this would lead with
> problems with debconf templates i18n (gettext complains when non ASCII
> is used in msgid as it wrongly assumes that English does not use
> anything but plain ASCII).

Agreed.  It's probably too soon to go to Unicode quotes.  And not all
fonts have great support for them: the code point is usually there, but
often the quotes look "weird" next to the rest of the text.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>