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Re: Why backquotes in GNU documentation?
From: |
Barry Margolin |
Subject: |
Re: Why backquotes in GNU documentation? |
Date: |
Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:35:24 -0500 |
User-agent: |
MT-NewsWatcher/3.5.3b3 (Intel Mac OS X) |
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
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
Re: Why backquotes in GNU documentation?, Richard Kettlewell, 2011/02/08