Re: LYNX-DEV U201e and U201c

[Christopher R. Maden]

[Hynek Med]
> On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Klaus Weide wrote:
> > For example, in German the low double quotation mark is used at
> > the beginning of quotes.  But a German reader will recognize [,,]
> > on a text screen as just two commas, whereas ["] is immedately
> > recognized as a quotation mark (not in the same position or
> > appearance as in print, but that comes with the medium "text
> > screen" and is not unexpected.)  The same goes, to a lesser
> > extent, for the other double-character replacements, and for the
> > single comma.
> > 
> > And I think it is easier to read about "Fierlingerismus" than it
> > is to read about ,,Fierlingerismus``.  Agreed?

I don't really have a preference for `` or '' vs. ".  I thought that
an effort should be made to represent bent quotes as such, but it's
really something best decided by people who actually use such things.
(Does the chartrans stuff have a mapping from Windows CP1250 "smart"
quotes into the Unicode points?  That would be cool.)

> Well, to tell the truth, it makes almost no differnce to me, do it
> as you feel it. When I see a short quote like ,,something'' or
> ,something' I don't feel it like a comma, but like a beginning of
> the quote. When I see "something", I feel it like quote the same.
> 
> > [Note that the example also uses the "wrong" closing quote
> > character.]
> 
> Windows/Word/converting program they used is to blame. :-(

I was basing the mapping on the Unicode name of the character:

 9'     201b    SINGLE HIGH-REVERSED-9 QUOTATION MARK
 9"     201f    DOUBLE HIGH-REVERSED-9 QUOTATION MARK

These implied a filled 9, flipped around the Y-axis.  I just checked
Unicode 2.0, and this is correct.  The best ASCII representation of
these characters is ` and `` respectively.  I do not, however, think
that this is the correct character to use to end a European quote.  

 "9     201d    RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK

should probably be used for that.

-Chris
-- 
Christopher R. Maden                  One Richmond Square
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