Fwd: [Moderator Action] Quotation marks in multilingual text

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Ivan Herman
Tel:+31 641044153
http://www.ivan-herman.net

(Written on mobile, sorry for brevity and misspellings...)



Begin forwarded message:

> From: Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>
> Date: 3 March 2014 18:44:15 CET
> To: public-digipub-ig@w3.org,  www International <www-international@w3.org>
> Subject: [Moderator Action] Quotation marks in multilingual text
> 
> There is a bug[1] raised against HTML5 to change the CSS used to render quotation marks around the q element.
> 
> Appropriate quotation marks vary from language to language. The bug was raised because the current spec text puts quote marks outside the q element that reflect the language of the quoted text, rather than that of the surrounding text.
> 
> In trying to come up with a better set of selectors, we ran into a problem and a question related to nested quotations.
> 
> Here's my question for the typography experts in the IG: If these rules apply for which quotation marks to use in which language:
> 
> Language    top level    nested
> Swiss French,    « »        ‹ ›
> English        " "        ' '
> German        „ “        ‚ ‘
> 
> 
> then, which of the following would one expect to see, if each language change marks a new quotation (ie. <p>un <q>two <q>drei <q>vier</q> fünf</q> six</q> sept<p>):
> 
> un «two 'drei ‚vier‘ fünf' six» sept
> 
> or
> 
> un «two "drei „vier“ fünf" six» sept
> 
> 
> I think the latter, but it seems difficult to achieve using the CSS quotes property if that specifies two levels of quotation marks.
> 
> Cheers,
> RI
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [1] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13398
>