Re: Wish List for New Spec

At 07:12 am 12/28/95 +0100, Philippe-Andre Prindeville wrote:
>On Dec 27, 21:16, Michael Seaton wrote:
>> bbreak@mit.edu (Ben Breakstone) wrote:
>> [ snip ]
>> > I believe the absence of typesetter's (or "curly," or "smart") quotation
>> > marks from the english HTML entity set to be a grievous omission.

   Perhaps not as grievous, but a noticable omission as well, are 
ligatures for "fi", "fl", "ffi", and "ffl", etc. 

>> These could be hinted at in the current standard by using <Q> </Q>.
>> However this is still not a full substitute for having entity names,
>> since there will likely be cases in which a solitary quote is desired.
>Yes, indeed.  You might have several paragraphs all from the same
>person, with no interruption.  In that case, each paragraph would start
>with a left double quote, but no closing quote would be necessary.
>So you could make </q> optional, like </p> is.  Note: this is
>highly language dependent.  Not all latin scripted languages follow
>this convention.  I know French doesn't, for example.

   Actually, it's worse than that. Different english-speaking locales
use quotation marks in different hierarchies. Brittish publishers 
commonly use single quotes for quotations and double quotes for 
quotations-within-quotations, while U.S. publishers use them in the 
opposite order. 


+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
 * BearHeart / Bill Weinman 
 * BearHeart@bearnet.com *            * http://www.bearnet.com/ *
 * Author of The CGI Book:    * http://www.bearnet.com/cgibook/ *
 * "To enjoy life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks." 
                                                       --Lazarus Long

Received on Thursday, 28 December 1995 01:58:18 UTC