On 2014-06-14 at 07:45, Yuri Khan wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 14, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> wrote:
>> OK, let me tell you how I do ' and ".  ' I do by moving my right
>> little finger one step (key) to the right.  The " I do by moving the
>> right little finger to the right shift, at the same time as the ring
>> finger slides along to the ' key.
>
> Now let me tell you how I do curly quotes.
>
> First, with my right thumb, I hold the AltGr modifier. Then, I press k
> and l in sequence to get a balanced pair of double curly quotes, or ;
> and ' for single quotes (I customized my xkb configuration files to
> get this but it works similarly with the out-of-the-box config).  This
> works for me in both Latin/English and Cyrillic/Russian layouts.  On
> the other hand, the straight quote is only available in the Latin
> layout; in Russian, I would have to first switch to Latin, then type
> the single quote, and finally switch back to Russian.

Now let me tell you how *and why* I do curly apostrophe and
quotes.

First I hold the AltGr modifier with my right thumb, then I press “,”
key (which is at the center of my keyboard, so the “g” key on
QWERTY/AZERTY keyboards, or the “I” key on the Dvorak layout I didn’t
learn enough yet), and I obtain fluidly a “’” without hurting my
fingers.

For curly quotes I hold AltGr and Shift with my right thumb and little
finger, and “2” or “3” (“7” and “5” on Dvorak layout) key to get either
the left or right one.  That doesn’t hurt my fingers, that’s quick, and
that let really efficiently accessible the main quote symbols of one of
my main language I learnt before 6 (and I can’t anymore choose another,
since now my brain definitely loosed plasticity, for ever, that’s it,
for any other human being: let’s do ido/lojban/esperanto/whatever to
stop torture us with insane languages such as English, French or
Italian).

I would recall you that’s it’s the *machine* that should serve you, not
the opposite.  Your keyboard layout should be made to let *you* write
text that *you* or people like *you* with *you* would like to speak
should read, so the more readable the text is, the better: curly quotes
make text more understandable and more readable, and that’s the way it
should *always* be, except on old limited english-oriented occidental
typewriters.

Never let tradition and cowardise enslave you.  These are the worst (and
maybe the only) curse of mankind.