From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Jun 3 12:42:56 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de [139.174.243.252]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 050A237BCCF for ; Sat, 3 Jun 2000 12:42:51 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) Received: (from olli@localhost) by dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) id VAA55917; Sat, 3 Jun 2000 21:42:49 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from olli) Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 21:42:49 +0200 (CEST) Message-Id: <200006031942.VAA55917@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> From: Oliver Fromme To: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-To: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Punctuation conventions X-Newsgroups: list.freebsd-chat In-Reply-To: <8h9nom$2721$1@atlantis.rz.tu-clausthal.de> Organization: Administration TU Clausthal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: tin/1.4.1-19991201 ("Polish") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/3.4-19991219-STABLE (i386)) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org In list.freebsd-chat Greg Lehey wrote: > On Friday, 2 June 2000 at 20:00:20 +0200, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > > The French use << text >>, German has >>text<< or ,,text``. > > Well, ,,text''. But this is what you were complaining about earlier. Sorry for nitpicking, but it's neither ,,text`` nor ,,text''. Unfortunately, ISO-8859-1 does not contain the right character (it looks like a comma rotated by 180°, i.e. shaped like the digit 6). BTW, is there a way to obtain them in SGML/Docbook, like “ and ” for English quotes? When restricted to ISO-8859-1 (or even plain ASCII), it depends on the font whether ,,text`` or ,,text'' comes visually closer to the real thing. It seems that in most monospaced pixel fonts (e.g. on terminals) the second variant looks better, while the first one tends to be better when using high-res proportional fonts. But this is just my observation, not a rule. Another possibility when restricted to ISO-8859-1 in German- language texts is to use »these« quotes. Personally I like them, but they're not available in plain ASCII, and I dislike their approximation using >>these<< characters. Regards Oliver PS: Just for the record, I use two spaces after periods in monospaced text -- not because I believe in some rule or standard, but just because I think it improves readability. When writing things in TeX, I also prefer the default mode (i.e. not \frenchspacing) for the same reason. -- Oliver Fromme, Leibnizstr. 18/61, 38678 Clausthal, Germany (Info: finger userinfo:olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) "In jedem Stück Kohle wartet ein Diamant auf seine Geburt" (Terry Pratchett) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message