- From: Walter Ian Kaye <walter@natural-innovations.com>
- Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 16:53:22 -0700
- To: www-html@w3.org
Is there a problem you are trying to solve? If so, what is it?
At 1:25a +0200 07/27/97, Holger Wahlen wrote:
> Seeing that there are entity definitions for things like en
> dash, left double quotation marks and the likes coming up,
> I'm wondering why I can't find anything to represent an
> apostrophe [1]. Okay, there's "’", but wouldn't it be
> better to have a name like "&apo;" as well? Imagine this:
> <!ENTITY rsquo CDATA "’">
> <!ENTITY apo CDATA "’">
> After all, the same glyph [2] is used in two different
> functions, so wouldn't it be appropriate to have two
> possibilities to refer to it? Apart from the mnemonic
Technically, that is not an apostrophe. ' is, regardless
of whether it looks "curly" or not. One could easily argue that
using a right single quote as an apostrophe constitutes abuse...
> advantage, this also wouldn't cause problems for syntax
> checks that might compare the numbers of occurrences of
> "‘" and "’" (as long as the entities are used
> `correctly', that is, of course).
And your use of "`" is correct? To me (and Adobe), that is a
grave accent which you are [mis]using as a left single quote.
That makes me shudder like fingernails on a chalkboard do. Ick.
> [1] To avoid misunderstandings: ' shouldn't be used as an
> apostrophe in a typographically decent text, but just as a
> symbol for some measures (feet, for instance). I'm talking
> about the glyph that should be used instead, which looks like
> a right single quotation mark.
That is purely a matter of presentation; HTML is about structure.
> [2] Actually I'm not quite certain whether it really is the
> same: Does Unicode distinguish between `real' apostrophe and
Ack, he did it again... a grave accent diacritic.
> r.s.q.m.? I don't know for sure, but I doubt it, because the
> expression "apostrophe" is already used to refer to '
> ("'") in the files I've checked.
Well, that's what it is -- '.
__________________________________________________________________________
Walter Ian Kaye <boo_at_best*com> Programmer - Excel, AppleScript,
Mountain View, CA ProTERM, FoxPro, HTML
http://www.natural-innovations.com/ Musician - Guitarist, Songwriter
Received on Saturday, 26 July 1997 19:54:14 UTC