Re: Why backquotes in GNU documentation?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <buovd0tbukn.fsf@dhlpc061.dev.necel.com>,
 Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> wrote:

> 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.

I certainly am not suggesting that Unicode quotes should be used 
instead.  I recommend "foo" or 'foo' rather than `foo'.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
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