French quotes treated as parentheses

French quotes treated as parentheses

[Sven Joachim]

The French quotes (« and ») do have a `parentheses' syntax.  This has a
rather negative effect in German texts, since these use _reversed_
French quotes:

    Ich sagte: »Emacs ist toll!«
   (I said: "Emacs is great!")

The result is that they are wrongly highlighted with show-paren-mode on,
and "Mismatched parentheses" error messages appearing in the echo
area.  I finally managed to work around that by putting

(modify-syntax-entry (string-to-char "»") "(")
(modify-syntax-entry (string-to-char "«") ")")

into my .emacs, but would it not be better to give the French quotes a
more neutral syntax (say punctuation), to not discriminate German
against French users?

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Ralf Angeli]

* Sven Joachim (2006-07-28) writes:

> The French quotes (« and ») do have a `parentheses' syntax.  This has a
> rather negative effect in German texts, since these use _reversed_
> French quotes:
[...]
> but would it not be better to give the French quotes a
> more neutral syntax (say punctuation), to not discriminate German
> against French users?

There was an extensive discussion about this problem on the list
which, IIRC, did not reach a conclusion.  Maybe somebody can find it
in the archives.

FWIW, in AUCTeX we have

  (modify-syntax-entry ?«  "."  TeX-mode-syntax-table)
  (modify-syntax-entry ?»  "."  TeX-mode-syntax-table))

-- 
Ralf

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Sven Joachim]

Ralf Angeli wrote:

> There was an extensive discussion about this problem on the list
> which, IIRC, did not reach a conclusion.  Maybe somebody can find it
> in the archives.

I tried to find it via the search form, but to no avail.
Does anybody remember when that discussion was?

> FWIW, in AUCTeX we have
> 
>   (modify-syntax-entry ?«  "."  TeX-mode-syntax-table)
>   (modify-syntax-entry ?»  "."  TeX-mode-syntax-table))

According to the AUCTeX ChangeLog, you made this change on
2004-12-01.  Was the discussion around that time?

Thanks,

Sven

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Ralf Angeli]

* Sven Joachim (2006-07-28) writes:

> Ralf Angeli wrote:
>
>> There was an extensive discussion about this problem on the list
>> which, IIRC, did not reach a conclusion.  Maybe somebody can find it
>> in the archives.
>
> I tried to find it via the search form, but to no avail.
> Does anybody remember when that discussion was?

It was on emacs-pretest-bug.  The first message was sent on March 9th,
2005 and had the subject "character syntax fixes needed".

You can find the thread at
<URL:http://thread.gmane.org/rzqd5u9irrz.fsf@dpcsport.dl.ac.uk>.

>> FWIW, in AUCTeX we have
>> 
>>   (modify-syntax-entry ?«  "."  TeX-mode-syntax-table)
>>   (modify-syntax-entry ?»  "."  TeX-mode-syntax-table))
>
> According to the AUCTeX ChangeLog, you made this change on
> 2004-12-01.  Was the discussion around that time?

That depends on your timeframe.

-- 
Ralf

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Richard Stallman]

    The result is that they are wrongly highlighted with show-paren-mode on,
    and "Mismatched parentheses" error messages appearing in the echo
    area.  I finally managed to work around that by putting

    (modify-syntax-entry (string-to-char "»") "(")
    (modify-syntax-entry (string-to-char "«") ")")

    into my .emacs, but would it not be better to give the French quotes a
    more neutral syntax (say punctuation), to not discriminate German
    against French users?

I think it would be better to set up a minor mode to switch to German
syntax, and connect this with a language environment.

Handa, what do you think?

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     The result is that they are wrongly highlighted with show-paren-mode on,
>     and "Mismatched parentheses" error messages appearing in the echo
>     area.  I finally managed to work around that by putting
>
>     (modify-syntax-entry (string-to-char "»") "(")
>     (modify-syntax-entry (string-to-char "«") ")")
>
>     into my .emacs, but would it not be better to give the French quotes a
>     more neutral syntax (say punctuation), to not discriminate German
>     against French users?
>
> I think it would be better to set up a minor mode to switch to German
> syntax, and connect this with a language environment.

That's pretty tough, given that the German speaking Swiss tend to use
a different direction from the Germans themselves.

It is really pretty messy.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Jorgen Schaefer]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

>> I think it would be better to set up a minor mode to switch to German
>> syntax, and connect this with a language environment.
>
> That's pretty tough, given that the German speaking Swiss tend to use
> a different direction from the Germans themselves.
>
> It is really pretty messy.

I don't think it's a good idea to mark angle quotation marks
as parenthesis syntax. Neither LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK nor
RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK are. (They would have the same
problem: German uses DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK as the left
quotation mark, and LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK as the right
one.)

Regards,
        -- Jorgen

-- 
((email . "forcer@forcix.cx") (www . "http://www.forcix.cx/")
 (gpg   . "1024D/028AF63C")   (irc . "nick forcer on IRCnet"))

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Sven Joachim]

David Kastrup wrote:
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>> I think it would be better to set up a minor mode to switch to German
>> syntax, and connect this with a language environment.
> 
> That's pretty tough, given that the German speaking Swiss tend to use
> a different direction from the Germans themselves.

Yes, and there is no special language environment for Swiss German ...
My vote goes to using punctuation syntax for these quotes.

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Sven Axelsson]

On 28/07/06, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
> >     The result is that they are wrongly highlighted with show-paren-mode on,
> >     and "Mismatched parentheses" error messages appearing in the echo
> >     area.  I finally managed to work around that by putting
> >
> >     (modify-syntax-entry (string-to-char "»") "(")
> >     (modify-syntax-entry (string-to-char "«") ")")
> >
> >     into my .emacs, but would it not be better to give the French quotes a
> >     more neutral syntax (say punctuation), to not discriminate German
> >     against French users?
> >
> > I think it would be better to set up a minor mode to switch to German
> > syntax, and connect this with a language environment.
>
> That's pretty tough, given that the German speaking Swiss tend to use
> a different direction from the Germans themselves.
>
> It is really pretty messy.

Right. Other quote symbols do not use paranthesis syntax. And, as
previously stated, different locales mix and match them in all kinds
of ways. E.g. in Denmark French quotes are used »like this«, in Sweden
they are used »like this». In Sweden, double quotes are similarly used
"like this", whereas in Germany an extra symbol is used „like this".

-- 
Sven Axelsson

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Richard Stallman]

    > I think it would be better to set up a minor mode to switch to German
    > syntax, and connect this with a language environment.

    That's pretty tough, given that the German speaking Swiss tend to use
    a different direction from the Germans themselves.

That doesn't really make it any harder, it just calls for
some differences in the commands to set things up.

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Richard Stallman]

    I don't think it's a good idea to mark angle quotation marks
    as parenthesis syntax. Neither LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK nor
    RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK are.

Maybe they should be.  Wouldn't it be convenient?

     (They would have the same
    problem: German uses DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK as the left
    quotation mark, and LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK as the right
    one.)

We can solve this problem, for whichever characters, by creating
a mode that selects one behavior or the other.

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Richard Stallman]

    Yes, and there is no special language environment for Swiss German ...

Perhaps this means there ought to be one.

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Richard Stallman]

    Right. Other quote symbols do not use paranthesis syntax. And, as
    previously stated, different locales mix and match them in all kinds
    of ways. E.g. in Denmark French quotes are used »like this«, in Sweden
    they are used »like this»

We could give them quote syntax in Swedish, and paren syntax in Danish.

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Jorgen Schaefer]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     I don't think it's a good idea to mark angle quotation marks
>     as parenthesis syntax. Neither LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK nor
>     RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK are.
>
> Maybe they should be.  Wouldn't it be convenient?

For some, yes. For others, no. Especially in multi-lingual text,
this can be annoying.

>      (They would have the same
>     problem: German uses DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK as the left
>     quotation mark, and LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK as the right
>     one.)
>
> We can solve this problem, for whichever characters, by creating
> a mode that selects one behavior or the other.

How about creating modes for the various options, or even just a
single `set-quote-environment', and set the syntax to punctuation
by default?

Regards,
        -- Jorgen

-- 
((email . "forcer@forcix.cx") (www . "http://www.forcix.cx/")
 (gpg   . "1024D/028AF63C")   (irc . "nick forcer on IRCnet"))

Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Yann Hodique]

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On 7/29/06, Sven Axelsson <sven.axelsson@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right. Other quote symbols do not use paranthesis syntax. And, as
> previously stated, different locales mix and match them in all kinds
> of ways. E.g. in Denmark French quotes are used »like this«, in Sweden
> they are used »like this». In Sweden, double quotes are similarly used
> "like this", whereas in Germany an extra symbol is used „like this".

Also, in France a left french quote is often used to mark the beginning of
each paragraph in a quotation, all of them "closed" by a single right
french quote, so that they are not balanced.

Like in :

  « Something ...
... in a paragraph.
  « Something else ...
... and then the end. »

-- 
Yann Hodique

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Re: French quotes treated as parentheses

[Richard Stallman]

    How about creating modes for the various options, or even just a
    single `set-quote-environment', and set the syntax to punctuation
    by default?

That seems like a good idea to me.
If it isn't simple, it should wait for after the release.