Re: latin-ltx.el: german and french quotation marks

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> >> From the current, changed leim/quail/latin-ltx.el:
> 
> >  ("\\glqq"  ?„) ("\"`"  ?„)
> >  ("\\grqq"  ?“) ("\"'"  ?“)
> >  ("\\flq" ?‹)
> >  ("\\frq" ?›)
> >  ("\\flqq" ?«) ("\"<" ?«)
> >  ("\\frqq" ?») ("\">" ?»)
> >  )
> 
> > The last time I looked "\"`" was a string starting with a double
> > quote, not with a backslash.  To start with a backslash, you'd have
> > to write "\\\"`" to start the string off with a backslash.
> 
> Oops, that's a bug.

No, it's clearly intentional.  After all, the convention of the
german babel option _is_ to have "` and "' be converted to German
quote characters.  It would be the right thing to do if not

a) non-Germans also tended to use the style
b) it did not actually shadow valid uses of "

The _right_ thing to do would be to _add_ a German-specific encoding
variant that would add _all_ shortcuts starting with " like "a "o "s
and of course also "` and "'.

Then German users could either work without the German-specific
shortcut sequences, or choose to use _all_ of them consistently.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum