Re: [Texmacs-dev] Proposal for consens: Quotation mark styles

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Norbert Nemec wrote:
> I'll try to summarize what I see as the current consens. Please give comments.
> (The following is meant as a suggestion for a long-term goal from the view of
> a user, not taking into account the ease of implementation, not setting any
> timeline. Further discussion should go to address@hidden)
>
> Naming
> ======
> The naming of different quotation mark styles, as listed by Andreas Seidl:
>
> "english"-quotation style:
> > 66-99 rule, both upper quotes
> > Pseudo-ASCII: ``double quoted text''
> > html: double: “ - ” single: ‘ - ’
>
> "french" quotation style:
> > Pseudo ASCII: <<double quoted text>>
> > html: double: &laquo - &raquo; single: &lsaquo - &rsaquo
>
> "german"-quotation style:
> > 99-66 rule, lower opening quotes, upper closing quotes
> > Pseudo ASCII: ,,double quoted text``
> > html: double: &bdquo; - &ldquo; single: &sbquo; - &lsquo;
>
> "swiss" quotation style:
> > Pseudo ASCII: >>double quoted text<<
> > html: double: &raquo; - &laquo; single: &rsaquo; - &lsaquo;
>
> Be aware that these are just names. I don't know how official they are, but
> they seem fit for TeXmacs internal use and for further discussion. Other
> styles may follow.

And the Dutch style: ,,blah''

> Internal handling
> ===========
> Every style should be supported in every language environment so the user can
> choose.
>
> My personal proposal:
> * support "hard-coded" quotation marks as well as "automatic" quotation marks.
> * The hard-coded marks should be displayed and printed independant of any
> environment setting. It should not be too simple to enter hard-coded
> quotation marks, so they are really only used in special situations.
> * The automatic marks should be displayed and printed depending on a
> configurable option. This option should have a default depending on the
> language of the text, but it should be possible to override that default by
> some variable setting. Automatic quotation marks should be simple to enter by
> keyboard. See next section.

That can be done.
Probably the automatic quotes should concern the "-key only.

> Keyboard sequences
> ==============
> This will probably have to be dependant on the language.
>
> For double quotes, Germans and English speakers only have one key  ["],
> anyway, it is fairly simple to decide from the context whether opening or
> closing quotes should be used: leading whitespace indicate opening quotes,
> leading letters indicate closing quotes, most leading special characters
> indicate closing quotes (except "(", "[", "\"" and maybe a few others)

I think that it might be even better to insert both the opening and
the closing quotes when pressing ", or maybe only when the automatic
bracket closing option is selected.

> I guess, most German speakers would prefer to type ["] even if they want to
> see swiss quotes.

Is that so? Germans: please give your opinion!

> What keys are French speakers used to use for typing quotes?

I use << and >>.

> Language defaults
> ===============
> In most languages, there is exactly one correct quotation mark style. In
> German, several styles are used. The majority of the big publishers use swiss
> quotations in books. There are a few others using french or german quotation
> mark style. The default should clearly be swiss quotation mark style, but it
> should be simple to override this default. People should not be forced to use
> hard-coded quotation marks just because they don't like the default look of
> automatic quotation marks.