I've been working on an online books site for almost four years now,
and have been putting smart quotes in each book. This is a major
hassle, and I'm beginning to think it's not worth it.
Is there a good reason not to use them in the first place? It would
certainly be simple to convert back to straight quotes.
Ian
-- http://sundry.ws/ 37  3835 
In our last episode,
<eg********************************@4ax.com>,
the lovely and talented Ian Rastall
broadcast on comp.infosystems. www.authoring.html: I've been working on an online books site for almost four years now,
and have been putting smart quotes in each book. This is a major
hassle, and I'm beginning to think it's not worth it.
Is there a good reason not to use them in the first place? It would
certainly be simple to convert back to straight quotes.
use <q>. Let the reader decide.
Ian
--
Lars Eighner us****@larseighner.com http://www.larseighner.com/
I have not seen as far as others because giants were standing on my shoulders.
On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 00:04:12 -0600, Lars Eighner
<us****@larseighner.com> wrote: use <q>. Let the reader decide.
This doesn't render in IE. Is there a way around that?
Ian
-- http://sundry.ws/
Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, Ian Rastall
<id*******@gmail.com> declared in comp.infosystems. www.authoring.html: This doesn't render in IE. Is there a way around that?
Use a real browser? :-)
--
Mark Parnell
My Usenet is improved; yours could be too: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html
On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:19:43 +1000, Mark Parnell
<we*******@clarkecomputers.com.au> wrote: Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, Ian Rastall
<id*******@gmail.com> declared in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
This doesn't render in IE. Is there a way around that?
Use a real browser? :-)
Myself, or my users? Fifty percent of them use IE.
Ian
-- http://sundry.ws/
In article <eg********************************@4ax.com>,
Ian Rastall <id*******@gmail.com> wrote: I've been working on an online books site for almost four years now,
and have been putting smart quotes in each book. This is a major
hassle, and I'm beginning to think it's not worth it.
Is there a good reason not to use them in the first place? It would
certainly be simple to convert back to straight quotes.
In case he doesn't answer: <http://webtips.dan.info/char.html> might
discourage you. Kudo's on your online books.
leo
--
<http://web0.greatbasin.net/~leo/>
On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 22:26:59 -0800, Leonard Blaisdell
<le*@greatbasin.com> wrote: In case he doesn't answer: <http://webtips.dan.info/char.html> might
discourage you. Kudo's on your online books.
Thanks, Leo. I really appreciate that. I've been using Unicode for the
smart quotes, so hopefully they're rendering correctly. I think
perhaps I'm guilty of thinking out loud on Usenet. :-) The problem is
whether or not it's worth it to do a search and replace on every file,
especially as this will introduce errors. I try to be as professional
as possible with the books, and curly quotes are standard in print.
IOW, it's just a dilemma. :-)
Ian
-- http://sundry.ws/
Ian Rastall wrote: I've been working on an online books site for almost four years now,
and have been putting smart quotes in each book. This is a major
hassle, and I'm beginning to think it's not worth it.
Is there a good reason not to use them in the first place? It would
certainly be simple to convert back to straight quotes.
There aren't any problems with using them, provided that they are
encoded correctly in the specified encoding. If you're using UTF-8,
there is no problem at all. All modern browsers support UTF-8 and all
modern systems would have fonts with the appropriate glyphs available.
If, however, you're declaring ISO-8859-1, for example, but really saving
as Windows-1252, then there is a problem (unless you're using character
references instead of typing the real character to include them).
--
Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ http://GetFirefox.com/ Rediscover the Web http://GetThunderbird.com/ Reclaim your Inbox
Ian Rastall: I've been working on an online books site for almost four years now, and
have been putting smart quotes in each book. This is a major hassle, and
I'm beginning to think it's not worth it.
Toby Inkster Keep the curly quotes -- curly quotes are great -- but abandon HTML for
most content.
Use Textile instead:
http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/
http://jimandlissa.com/project/textilephp
Huh? Using psuedo-code is somehow better? They just seem to offer a way
of automatically converting plain text into HTML (a useful tool), and
something else which converts in quasi-HTML/text (dubious value). Sure,
I'd support the idea of using a decent authoring or conversion tool,
rather than hand typing HTML, but I wouldn't recommend "abandoning HTML".
Some time ago I tidied up some crappy HTML versions of some novels. It
involved little more than a few iterations of search and replace to
correct the punctuation (e.g. something like a space then a quote being
converted to opening quotes, etc.). Only a few rules were needed to do it
well, and that was with a plain text editor. There are some word
processors that would do that for you.
--
If you insist on e-mailing me, use the reply-to address (it's real but
temporary). But please reply to the group, like you're supposed to.
This message was sent without a virus, please destroy some files yourself.
Lars Eighner wrote: use <q>. Let the reader decide.
First, <q> is not supported by the most commonly used browser.
Second, it means inline quotation. Quotation marks are used for other
purposes as well, such as "scare quotes".
Third, <q> is being phased out from XHTML.
Fourth, <q> gives "straight" quotes on most browsers that support it, so
you don't win anything.
Fifth, orthography is something that the author needs to decide, just as
spelling and content. The exact shape of quotes is a presentation issue
(typography); the use of correct abstract characters is a matter of
correct writing (orthography).
Ian Rastall wrote: The problem is
whether or not it's worth it to do a search and replace on every file,
especially as this will introduce errors.
For the most of it, it should be possible to use a simple tool (like a
macro) to convert each "..." to “...” (or the equivalent
expression using real characters instead of references). This is
admittedly error-prone: if there is, by mistake, a lone quotation mark
in the text, you'll get the alternation wrong.
Anyway, converting Ascii (straight) quotes to orthographically correct
quotes is worth doing these days. The old principle of using the simple
and robust Ascii quotes is outdated. There's a particular reason to
perform the operation when you start converting plain text to HTML. You
can rather safely assume that every Ascii quote in plain text should be
replaced by language-dependent quotation marks, except for computer code
and rare cases like using " to denote inches. After you have started
adding HTML markup, you probably have lots of " characters as delimiters
of HTML attributes, and then the conversion is more difficult.
Jukka K. Korpela wrote: Anyway, converting Ascii (straight) quotes to orthographically correct
quotes is worth doing these days. The old principle of using the simple
and robust Ascii quotes is outdated. There's a particular reason to
perform the operation when you start converting plain text to HTML. You
can rather safely assume that every Ascii quote in plain text should be
replaced by language-dependent quotation marks, except for computer code
and rare cases like using " to denote inches.
Just one thing--I feel as though any time someone recommends using
typographically correct quotation marks, it should come with an explicit
warning not to embed them directly using the default Windows encoding
for them.
On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Harlan Messinger wrote: Just one thing--I feel as though any time someone recommends using
typographically correct quotation marks, it should come with an explicit
warning not to embed them directly using the default Windows encoding
for them.
As long as you have "charset=windows-1252", there's nothing wrong
with it.
--
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Denmark.
And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Jeg er dansker!"
In our last episode,
<tf********************************@4ax.com>,
the lovely and talented Ian Rastall
broadcast on comp.infosystems. www.authoring.html: On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 00:04:12 -0600, Lars Eighner
<us****@larseighner.com> wrote:
use <q>. Let the reader decide.
This doesn't render in IE. Is there a way around that?
Sure. Install a standards-compliant browser.
--
Lars Eighner us****@larseighner.com http://www.larseighner.com/
Save the whales! Collect the whole set!
On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:11:06 GMT, Lachlan Hunt
<sp***********@gmail.com> wrote: If you're using UTF-8, there is no problem at all.
Yes, I'm using UTF-8. I think I'll take Jukka's suggestion, and work
on a better macro! :-)
Ian
-- http://sundry.ws/
Leonard Blaisdell wrote: In article <eg********************************@4ax.com>,
Ian Rastall <id*******@gmail.com> wrote:
I've been working on an online books site for almost four years now,
and have been putting smart quotes in each book. This is a major
hassle, and I'm beginning to think it's not worth it.
Is there a good reason not to use them in the first place? It would
certainly be simple to convert back to straight quotes.
In case he doesn't answer: <http://webtips.dan.info/char.html> might
discourage you. Kudo's on your online books.
leo
Another good reference is <http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/>.
If your goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible, you should
avoid "smart quotes", which are not smart at all. They might work on
PCs and Macs, but they don't always work on Unix platforms. They might
work on newer browsers, but many older browsers are still in use.
And no, it is not acceptable to demand that your audience use your
favorite browser on your favorite host. Your effort to communicate
should attempt to accommodate your audience. With varied configurations
used by your audience, this is accomplished by adhering to (1) the W3C
specifications (which do not necessarily agree with the Unicode-UTF
standards) and (2) the <http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/index.html>
recommendations.
--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>
Concerned about someone (e.g., Pres. Bush) snooping
into your E-mail? Use PGP.
See my <http://www.rossde.com/PGP/>
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:59:20 -0800, "David E. Ross"
<no****@nowhere.not> wrote: it is not acceptable to demand that your audience use your
favorite browser on your favorite host.
Hi David. This was suggested by someone else, not myself. I don't use
IE, but half my users do, and I wouldn't ask them to switch to suit my
purposes.
Ian
-- http://sundry.ws/
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:37:00 +0200, Stephen Poley
<sb******************@xs4all.nl> wrote: Do you put them in by hand? I wrote a little sed script to do it:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmat...er_quotes.html
Thanks, Stephen. I jumped in feet first with that one and got lost.
The script seemed to work, but it turned a chapter into a blank file,
and created a blank temp file. I had a backup, so it was no crisis.
Perhaps if I could contact you by email and figure out how to get it
working?
Ian
-- http://sundry.ws/
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:59:20 -0800, "David E. Ross" <no****@nowhere.not>
wrote: If your goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible, you should
avoid "smart quotes", which are not smart at all. They might work on
PCs and Macs, but they don't always work on Unix platforms. They might
work on newer browsers, but many older browsers are still in use.
I decided not to be pedantic and criticise the OP for his use of the
term "smart quotes" (which AIUI is a silly Microsoftism) but it does
seem to have caused some confusion.
If by smart quotes one means &ldquo and &rdquo, or their UTF-8
equivalents, then it should be fine to use them. (If some Unix platforms
can't handle them, then they damn well should be able to by now - but I
expect they can.)
If on the other hand one means the invalid Microsoft #147 and #148
characters, then they should indeed be avoided.
--
Stephen Poley http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/
On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 01:41:00 -0500, Ian Rastall <id*******@gmail.com>
wrote: On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:37:00 +0200, Stephen Poley
<sb******************@xs4all.nl> wrote:
Do you put them in by hand? I wrote a little sed script to do it:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmat...er_quotes.html
Thanks, Stephen. I jumped in feet first with that one and got lost.
The script seemed to work, but it turned a chapter into a blank file,
and created a blank temp file.
Oops!
I had a backup, so it was no crisis.
Perhaps if I could contact you by email and figure out how to get it
working?
By all means. (It should be easy to work out what my e-mail address is.)
--
Stephen Poley http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/
On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 10:00:39 +0200, Stephen Poley
<sb******************@xs4all.nl> wrote: If by smart quotes one means &ldquo and &rdquo, or their UTF-8
equivalents, then it should be fine to use them.
Yes, that's what I mean. Thanks for correcting me on the use of the
term "smart quotes". I had a suspicion that it wasn't proper usage.
Ian
-- http://sundry.ws/
In article <Gf********************@iswest.net>,
"David E. Ross" <no****@nowhere.not> wrote: If your goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible, you should
avoid "smart quotes", which are not smart at all. They might work on
PCs and Macs, but they don't always work on Unix platforms. They might
work on newer browsers, but many older browsers are still in use.
Unix platforms with FreeType handle proper quotation marks just fine and
browsers for legacy rendering methods (e.g. non-FreeType Firefox on
Solaris and Lynx) fall back on ASCII quotes when needed.
--
Henri Sivonen hs******@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Mozilla Web Author FAQ: http://mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.html
Stephen Poley wrote: On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:59:20 -0800, "David E. Ross" <no****@nowhere.not>
wrote:
If by smart quotes one means &ldquo and &rdquo, or their UTF-8
equivalents, then it should be fine to use them. (If some Unix platforms
can't handle them, then they damn well should be able to by now - but I
expect they can.)
However, you should include the semicolon at the end of the entity
reference, like “ -- while there are some circumstances where
it's allowed to omit this, it's safest to use it.
--
Dan
Stephen Poley <sb******************@xs4all.nl> writes: [...] the invalid Microsoft #147 and #148
characters,
Oh. Since when, in what context, on both accounts?
(to anticipate the obvious, SGML allows to insert non-SGML characters by
character reference all right, and no, M$ does *not* own the code point
range 128-159 of ISO 10646; OTOH, I never used a Linux distro that did
not default to Windows 1252 for them instead)
--
||| hexadecimal EBB
o-o decimal 3771
--oOo--( )--oOo-- octal 7273
205 goodbye binary 111010111011
Jukka K. Korpela wrote: Third, <q> is being phased out from XHTML.
Whoa whoa whoa...now I know I've been out of the loop. When/how/why has
this been decided? It's not because of reason the first above, is it?
I've been trying to use <q> for years because it seemed like a good idea
and it was recommended in the standards, and now it's going to be yanked?
Tim
On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 03:36:04 +0200, Eric B. Bednarz
<be*****@fahr-zur-hoelle.org> wrote: Stephen Poley <sb******************@xs4all.nl> writes:
[...] the invalid Microsoft #147 and #148
characters,
Oh. Since when, in what context, on both accounts?
(to anticipate the obvious, SGML allows to insert non-SGML characters by
character reference all right, and no, M$ does *not* own the code point
range 128-159 of ISO 10646; OTOH, I never used a Linux distro that did
not default to Windows 1252 for them instead)
Sorry - maybe I´m slow, but your point has eluded me. Are you saying
that it was not Microsoft's idea to use 147 and 148 for quotation marks?
(And if so, whose was it?)
--
Stephen Poley http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/
Eric B. Bednarz wrote: Stephen Poley <sb******************@xs4all.nl> writes:
[...] the invalid Microsoft #147 and #148
characters,
Oh. Since when, in what context, on both accounts?
(to anticipate the obvious, SGML allows to insert non-SGML characters by
character reference all right, and no, M$ does *not* own the code point
range 128-159 of ISO 10646; OTOH, I never used a Linux distro that did
not default to Windows 1252 for them instead)
Although, in the Unicode standard (according to the code chart at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf ), these characters are STS
(Set Transmit State) and CCH (Cancel Character) respectively.
--
Dan
On Sat, 1 Apr 2006, Henri Sivonen wrote: Unix platforms with FreeType handle proper quotation marks just fine and
browsers for legacy rendering methods (e.g. non-FreeType Firefox on
Solaris and Lynx) fall back on ASCII quotes when needed.
Or use ISO-8859-13 fonts from
/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_13/X11/fonts/
ISO-8859-13 contains quotation marks at xA1, xA5, xB4, xFF. http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPIN...59/8859-13.TXT
Timothy Larson <th*********@cox.net> wrote: Jukka K. Korpela wrote: Third, <q> is being phased out from XHTML.
Whoa whoa whoa...now I know I've been out of the loop. When/how/why has
this been decided?
Vaguely, as usual, but the XHTML 2.0 draft has had <q> dropped out (and
<quote>, with essentially different semantics, invented instead)
quite a long time.
It's not because of reason the first above, is it?
Lack of support is probably one of the reasons. Another reason is that it was
a poor idea from the beginning. If <q> were used for inline quotations,
_instead of_ quotation marks, then it would be equally logical to use markup
for other phrase modes, such as
<question>Does this make sense</question><statement>I guess
not</statement><exclamation>It's actually a bad idea</exclamation>
I've been trying to use <q> for years because it seemed like a good idea
and it was recommended in the standards, and now it's going to be yanked?
That's life.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html
On Sun, 2 Apr 2006, Eric B. Bednarz wrote: Stephen Poley <sb******************@xs4all.nl> writes:
[...] the invalid Microsoft #147 and #148
characters,
Oh. Since when, in what context, on both accounts? (to anticipate
the obvious, SGML allows to insert non-SGML characters by character
reference all right, and no, M$ does *not* own the code point range
128-159 of ISO 10646;
Right, but the SGML declaration for HTML says that the characters 127
to 159 decimal (inclusive) are UNUSED in the document character set.
Years ago, I was told by an SGML specialist that code points which are
declared to be UNUSED can be referenced by &#number; to mean whatever
the consenting parties agree them to mean. If that be true, it
appears that MS decided long ago that “ , and so forth, would
mean whatever they decided they wanted them to mean, deeming that the
other parties had no choice but to consent. As, indeed, many of them
have chosen to do.
OTOH, I never used a Linux distro that did
not default to Windows 1252 for them instead)
But don't confuse an external character encoding of windows-1252 with
a numerical character reference of &#number; ! (As if you would - but
your posting seems highly capable of being misunderstood in that
regard by those who have not firmly grasped the distinction).
While it may very well be true that most browser implementers felt
pressured to implement them both, the fact is that the former is
clearly bona fide, in as much as the proprietary windows-1252 encoding
has been properly registered at IANA; whereas the latter is rather
dubious in HTML (and IINM is actually illegal in XHTML).
--
Ian Rastall wrote: On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:59:20 -0800, "David E. Ross"
<no****@nowhere.not> wrote:
LOL - never noticed that before.
Did you get that from me, David? I posted with that email addy for years...
Tony wrote: Ian Rastall wrote: On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:59:20 -0800, "David E. Ross"
<no****@nowhere.not> wrote:
LOL - never noticed that before.
Did you get that from me, David? I posted with that email addy for years...
Do you mean the <no****@nowhere.not>? I saw something similar and
decided to use it. I want to make sure that it would not accidentally
be a legitimate address, thus the .not TLD.
--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>
Concerned about someone (e.g., Pres. Bush) snooping
into your E-mail? Use PGP.
See my <http://www.rossde.com/PGP/>
"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@physics.gla.ac.uk> writes: But don't confuse an external character encoding of windows-1252 with
a numerical character reference of &#number; ! (As if you would - but
your posting seems highly capable of being misunderstood in that
regard by those who have not firmly grasped the distinction).
Quite, but calling references to non-SGML characters 'invalid' is bound
to be misunderstood as well, because for an SGML parser they *are valid*
as long as they appear in a data context, id est a problem of the
application they are passed to, *and* even likely to be displayed as
intended by that application.
This makes it hard to understand that it isn't what you (well, not you
;-) actually wanted to do (directly referencing code points of the
actual document character set, instead of relying on local voodoo
encoding heuristics that are untransparently assumed to apply, as it
usually happens, and not only under M$ Windows).
Character encoding is still the unbeloved stepchild of the internet at
large. Tools usually suck and most 'IT professionals' don't have the
first clue about it either. OTOH, *real* problems I see every other day
rather have to do with improperly advertised multibyte characters. In
the context of 'web-applications', 'mixed-content' has become a totally
new concept in that respect. :-(
--
||| hexadecimal EBB
o-o decimal 3771
--oOo--( )--oOo-- octal 7273
205 goodbye binary 111010111011
David E. Ross wrote: Tony wrote:
Ian Rastall wrote:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:59:20 -0800, "David E. Ross"
<no****@nowhere.not> wrote:
LOL - never noticed that before.
Did you get that from me, David? I posted with that email addy for
years...
Do you mean the <no****@nowhere.not>? I saw something similar and
decided to use it. I want to make sure that it would not accidentally
be a legitimate address, thus the .not TLD.
That's pretty much what I did. Like I said, I used EXACTLY that for many
years, until maybe 6 months ago or so. And I never saw anyone else using
it in all those years.
It just struck me as a bit funny :) This thread has been closed and replies have been disabled. Please start a new discussion. Similar topics
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