Re: Why backquotes in GNU documentation?

[Miles Bader]

Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>> > Now, I was wondering what could be the reason behind this convention.
>> > Why not use just straight quotes also in front of the quoted word?
>> 
>> It's an attempt to emulate proper left and right single quotation marks
>> in ASCII.  I don't like it.
>
> Neither do I.  The problem is that in most computer fonts, ` and ' are 
> not mirror images of each other.  ` is angled, but ' is usually vertical.

I know, lots of tech folk love to obsess over minutia, but given the
problems created by using unicode quotes, and the usefulness of balanced
delimiters (even if they're sometimes a little ugly), I find it amazing
that people go to such great lengths to try (emphasis here...)  and
"fix" this.

-Miles

-- 
"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're
just making him madder and madder." -- Homer Simpson