bug-texinfo
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: makeinfo should quote 'like this' instead of `like this'


From: John Darrington
Subject: Re: makeinfo should quote 'like this' instead of `like this'
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:45:32 +0000
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17)

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 05:20:42PM -0800, Karl Berry wrote:
     
     Yes, fine.  But the question at hand is about the info/plaintext output
     for @file when enable-encoding is *not* set, and/or utf-8 is not
     specified,.  Up till now, makeinfo in all its forms has output `foo'.
     But I guess we have to now change to 'foo'.

Why?
     
     I hate this whole move to undirected quotes, personally.
     But I already lost that argument.

I didn't see that argument.  Where was it?
     
         So, should I proceed with ` becoming ' in ascii in info/Plaintext
         output?
     
     I fear so.  I can't see any convincing reason for us to refuse.

Conversely, I see no convincing reason to change.  In fact the only reason 
that anyone has ever given is that using ` as an opening quote 
"is a misuse of the grave accent".  Such an argument is biased, misleading,
if not a downright falsehood.

For the record, RFC20 says the meaning of character 0x60 is EITHER "grave 
accent" OR "opening single quotation mark".  It then says this character ".. 
should
not be used without determining that there is agreement between sender and
recipient" http://art.tools.ietf.org/html/rfc20

Admittedly this is hardly a desirable situation.  But that is the history - 
the agreement in GNU has always been that 0x60 means opening single quote.
Changing the agreement now is only going to cause confusion, and will 
make an undesirable situation worse.
     
J'

-- 
PGP Public key ID: 1024D/2DE827B3 
fingerprint = 8797 A26D 0854 2EAB 0285  A290 8A67 719C 2DE8 27B3
See http://keys.gnupg.net or any PGP keyserver for public key.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]