From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 9ffb6ce 5/5: Quoting fixes in lisp/international and lisp/leim Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2015 12:48:47 +0200 Message-ID: <871tefye0g.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> References: <55E3F434.2060507@yandex.ru> <55E496DC.1030608@cs.ucla.edu> <877foas9jh.fsf@gmail.com> <20150901190014.GB1997@acm.fritz.box> <20150902100252.GC2544@acm.fritz.box> <55E724AA.30301@cs.ucla.edu> <20150902172345.GF2544@acm.fritz.box> <87y4goyax4.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <55E7776D.2010102@cs.ucla.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1441277363 16936 80.91.229.3 (3 Sep 2015 10:49:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2015 10:49:23 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Alan Mackenzie , Dmitry Gutov , Oleh Krehel , Stefan Monnier , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Paul Eggert Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Sep 03 12:49:15 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZXS4w-0006Pr-FM for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 03 Sep 2015 12:49:14 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:46807 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZXS4w-0002Qh-7w for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 03 Sep 2015 06:49:14 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:49044) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZXS4c-0002PC-Kz for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Sep 2015 06:48:55 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZXS4b-00043A-Kw for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Sep 2015 06:48:54 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([208.118.235.10]:52623) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZXS4X-00042W-SJ; Thu, 03 Sep 2015 06:48:50 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:37425 helo=lola) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1ZXS4X-0001qh-1j; Thu, 03 Sep 2015 06:48:49 -0400 Original-Received: by lola (Postfix, from userid 1000) id A725AE12D9; Thu, 3 Sep 2015 12:48:47 +0200 (CEST) In-Reply-To: <55E7776D.2010102@cs.ucla.edu> (Paul Eggert's message of "Wed, 2 Sep 2015 15:25:49 -0700") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.0.50 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 208.118.235.10 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:189498 Archived-At: Paul Eggert writes: > On 09/02/2015 10:43 AM, David Kastrup wrote: >> ' is an_apostrophe_. Changing it to an open single quote >> mark in words like "don't" is utterly wrong > > I assume you meant =E2=80=9Cclose single quote=E2=80=9D not =E2=80=9Copen= single quote=E2=80=9D. (It > would indeed be utterly wrong to transliterate apostrophe to open > single quote, but Emacs doesn=E2=80=99t do that.) > > The initial version of the quote-tranformation code behaved as you > suggested, and left isolated apostrophes alone. But Dmitry pointed > out that apostrophe in English is represented by right single > quotation mark as standard typographic practice in fonts with directed > quotes, so I changed Emacs to translate all non-escaped apostrophes. > In practice most isolated apostrophes in docstrings and diagnostics > are intended to be English apostrophes, so it seemed appropriate to > transliterate them as in English, of course with an escape hatch for > those intended to be Elisp apostrophes. > > For more about common practice with apostrophes in natural-language > text, please see > . Hardly a reputable source, and they mix up encoding with representation awfully. Looking up what the Unicode Consortium itself has to say about the issue tells us on page 274: Punctuation Apostrophe. U+2019 right single quotation mark is preferred where the character is to represent a punctuation mark, as for contractions: \u201cWe\u2019ve been here before.\u201d In this latter case, U+2019 is also referred to as a punctuation apostrophe. (by the way: is there any way to make Emacs stop this \u201c pasting abomination when using C-y on an X Window selection?). Well, the whole world appears to have gone mad. Why would they prefer a character _explicitly_ called a right quote to a character called apostrophe when writing an apostrophe? But with regard to text processing (such as Word for Windows would do), you clearly have the character set authorities on your side. With most of my (monospaced) work fonts, that is a clearly inferior choice since the glyph disrupts the flow of words. --=20 David Kastrup