ASCII and Unicode quotation marks

Post by lottin » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #5

ratmice wrote: post #2

FYI For a long time GNU coding standards prescribed using the grave accent, but this changed some years ago now https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Quote-Character...

From the link: > Although GNU programs traditionally used 0x60 (‘`’) for opening and 0x27 (‘'’) for closing quotes, nowadays quotes ‘`like this'’ are typically rendered asymmetrically, so quoting ‘"like this"’ or ‘'like this'’ typically looks better. Is this link saying I can quit using `QUOTES' in my Emacs-documentation? That style always struck me as odd :)

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 7:35 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #5

ratmice wrote: post #2

FYI For a long time GNU coding standards prescribed using the grave accent, but this changed some years ago now https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Quote-Character...

From the link: > Although GNU programs traditionally used 0x60 (‘`’) for opening and 0x27 (‘'’) for closing quotes, nowadays quotes ‘`like this'’ are typically rendered asymmetrically, so quoting ‘"like this"’ or ‘'like this'’ typically looks better. Is this link saying I can quit using `QUOTES' in my Emacs-documentation? That style always struck me as odd :)

Post by unkown-unknowns » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 7:46 PM UTC

garou wrote: post #7

It's very odd for me to see the grave accent (`) as quoting mark in bash and other programming languages. I understand that the accent alone lose its function for the human language. But still uncomfortable to se an accent as delimiter to a string.

Post by jstimpfle » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 7:51 PM UTC

mbrock wrote: post #17

treve wrote: post #10

It just occurred to me how much easier certain text-operations (like syntax highlighting, regular expressions and other parsers) if we consistently used the right unicode symbols for quotes and apostrophes

The only languages I know off the top of my head that use balanced delimiters for strings are M4 and Perl 6. Hey, imagine being able to nest strings without escaping! What a concept!

Post by cesarb » Wed, Sep 13, 2017, 7:58 PM UTC

saint_fiasco wrote: post #13

sp332 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure why ASCII has a grave accent. There are no combining marks so you could never write it over another letter. Edit: I forgot HTAB was actually part of ASCII. Oh well!

In ASCII instead of combining marks what you have to do is write three characters: * The unaccented letter * The backspace character * The accent character If this makes no sense to you, try to imagine a literal, physical typewriter. Windows line terminators also work with a similar principle.