Chronological Thread 

< Chronological >      < Thread >

---

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 texmacs-dev@...)

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: &ldquo; - &rdquo; single: &lsquo; - &rsquo;

"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.


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.


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)

The Alt-l/Alt-r technique can be used to override that automagic behavior by
hand.

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

I have no idea yet, how single quotes should be entered. The [']-key would
usually be used for apostrophes, the [`] is not really handy if it is
configured as dead-key for assembling accented characters. Proposals?

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


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.

-----------------------------------------------------



--
______________________Norbert Nemec <address@hidden>

Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
Institut für Theoretische Physik III
Staudtstr. 7 ... D-91058 Erlangen ... Room No. U1.526
Tel: +49 9131 / 85-28816 ... Mobile: +49 179 / 7475199

---

• Proposal for consens: Quotation mark styles, Norbert Nemec, 11/14/2003

---

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.19.