Re: Smart quotes for Greek (questions for a possible patch)

[mvar <mvar.40k@gmail.com>]

Juan Manuel Macías <maciaschain@posteo.net> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I would like to submit a patch to add smart quotes for Greek in
> `org-export-smart-quotes-alist', but I have a couple of questions.
>
> First of all, I am not a native speaker of Greek but of Spanish, so I
> would also like to have the opinion of some Greek native speaker, to see
> if my solutions are correct.
>
> The second question concerns the second-level quotation marks for Greek.
> The first level ones are the same as the Spanish or French quotes
> (without the extra space of French): «», so no problem. I follow here
> the rule that Yannis Haralambous explains in "From Unicode to
> Typography, a Case Study: the Greek Script" (1999, p. 20:
> http://web.archive.org/web/20120229131933/http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/pdf/boston99.pdf).
>
> According to Haralambous, on the second-level quotation marks (the
> emphases are mine):
>
> #+begin_quote
>
> Also interesting is the case of the second level quotes. Here, quotes of
> the size and shape of the English ones are used, but the opening quotes
> are inverted, similar in form to raised small round guillemets [...].
> Fortunately these quotes are provided by the Unicode standard (*U+201F*
> and U+201D, the latter being the same closing double quotes as in
> English); *the author knows no other language in which this combination
> of double quotes might be used*.
>
> #+end_quote
>
>
> So the problem is in the character U+201F (assuming Haralambous is
> right). For the keywords `:utf8' and `html' no problem. But I don't know
> what to put in `:latex' or in `:texinfo':
>
> #+begin_src emacs-lisp
> (secondary-opening :utf-8 "‟" :html "&#8223;;" :latex "??" :texinfo "??")
> #+end_src
>
> In fact, I think latex2e has no command or shorthand predefined for this
> character (see https://ibb.co/ZBGmwYP). There would be no problem with
> LuaTeX and XeTeX. But this character would be difficult to obtain in
> pdfTeX even using inputenc with the utf8 option.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Juan Manuel

hi Juan,

i can confirm the «» characters are the proper ones for the first level
of quoting..Now about second level, personally i haven't seen such nesting in
ages but IIRC they should be the ones (or *very* similar) in the linked image you posted ->
\textquotedblleft and \textquotedblright. I've no idea how these
translate to UTF. Note that the standard greek keyboards & keymaps do not have
any of these characters mapped by default (not even «» ), most people use the standard
english double/single quotes, at least in electronic writing (articles,
daily communication etc).
Protesilaos (cc) might have a better view on this matter.

cheers,
Michalis