[Bug 13398] i18n-ISSUE-80: Default rules for the quotes property

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13398

--- Comment #6 from Martin Dürst <duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp> 2011-09-01 01:08:50 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #5)
> Anne: I agree with what dbaron wrote in that bug

It would be good to know which of David Baron's comments in that bug is meant;
I'm assuming https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16206#c84.

> — if we have a spec for it, we can use it.
> 
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > How about this CLDR data?
> > http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/by_type/misc.delimiters.html
> 
> If you would like to use this list, please provide it in the form of CSS
> selectors and I'll be happy to add it to the spec.

I think the CLDR data should be used by reference, not by copying it.
Otherwise, we will be limited to exactly the languages that CLDR covers now.

At https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16206#c84, David Baron says:
"We certainly shouldn't "refine" the values from release to release, since that
would cause even more confusion for authors."

I somewhat agree with respect to languages for which quotes are already
defined. But I don't agree with respect to languages that aren't yet covered.

Even for languages for which the data is already defined, if we assume that the
selection of quotes is part of styling, then the actual quotes may indeed
differ from browser to browser. As an example, assume that there is a language
where it's customary to use '"' for quotations with sans-serif fonts and "«"
"»" with serif fonts, or some other style dependency. Then the browser default
style sheet will depend on the fonts selected in the default stylesheet.

If the above example of style-dependent quotes sounds too unrealistic (as far
as I know, it's just a hypothetical example), then having the default
stylesheet inserting quotes around a <q> element may be unnecessary.

Overall, my position would be to have the browsers implement either of two:
a) no default quotes for the 'q' element (authors who want automatic addition
can do so via their own style sheets)
b) full language-dependent automatic quote addition not limited to the CLDR
data we currently have, but updated at a reasonable pace if new data gets
available.

Of course the choice between a) and b) must be the same for all browsers!

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Received on Thursday, 1 September 2011 01:09:00 UTC