RE: ASCII-only startup message?

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> > Any evidence for your claim that ' is in Unicode only for
> > compatibility between "left single quotation mark" and "right
> > single quotation mark"?  Do you think that is even the most
> > common use case for ' in old-fashioned plain text, whether
> > typewriter or computer?  ", yes, but '?  I don't think so.
> 
> Given the English’ propensity to still not use contractions, but to
> use single quotation marks when quoting, it’s not as clear cut as you
> suggest either.

Sorry, but I don't know what that means, or how it relates to
what you quoted from me.  Is there a propensity in English not
to use contractions?  Maybe in some academic writing.  Not in
general, to my knowledge.

Are you arguing that you think that ' has been used mainly for
quotation and not as an apostrophe?  Perhaps in Britain, where
single quotation marks are apparently used at the top level,
but not in the US, is my guess.  I think you will find relatively
few uses of single quotation marks in American English, and
relatively many uses of an apostrophe.  But it's not an important
point.  And I never said it was "clear cut" - I said "I don't
think so", and I _asked_ what Per thought.