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HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

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Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#31

Post by elguyosupremo »

fuckstick wrote: post #26
xk3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

smart/soft quotes are usually: ‘|’|“|” but there are also other quoting glyphs in ASCII but especially UTF-8

Why are they soft or smart? That makes no sense - they’re just open and close quotation marks.

Smart quotes really refers the feature some software has where it automatically detects what type of quote should be used (opening or closing) and puts that in so you can just use the same quote key at the beginning and end and it'll substitute in the right "smart quote".

Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#32

Post by flobosg »

Tomte wrote: post #28

They aren't smart or soft, they are typographically correct. On PC I have AutoHotKey bindings for German and English quotes, single and double, and I'm usually using them.

On Linux I use Fcitx and Ctrl+Shift+Alt+U to open the Unicode character picker, while on Windows I have my fork of a character picker discovered a while ago (https://github.com/flobosg/character-picker) bound to the same shortcut.

Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#33

Post by ShamelessC »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #12
minimaxir wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are better known as "smart quotes" iOS at the least by default will substitute "dumb" quotes with smart quotes in text boxes.

Why is OP describing that as “disturbing” (I type with “smart” quotes)? It’s not intentional; it’s just because I’m on an iPhone.[a] On the default keyboard, if I want "dumb" quotes, I have to tap and hold the key to get the popup. Simply tapping the quote key is less effort. [a]: On my computers, I’ll use "dumb" quotes. Easy way to see where I typed a comment from, I guess.

It is simply because they present a commonly encountered scenario where you mistakenly paste them into your code. Not something I encounter much lately but definitely tripped me up in my early years.

Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#34

Post by smcameron »

Tomte wrote: post #28

They aren't smart or soft, they are typographically correct. On PC I have AutoHotKey bindings for German and English quotes, single and double, and I'm usually using them.

> they are typographically correct.

According to an ancient convention.

Conventions can be changed. It is not intrinsically, objectively superior to have two separate glyphs for a starting and ending quotation mark. I'd argue the opposite. It is needless complexity. Let us jettison it and embrace the simpler single glyph.

Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#35

Post by Tomte »

smcameron wrote: post #34
Tomte wrote: post #28

They aren't smart or soft, they are typographically correct. On PC I have AutoHotKey bindings for German and English quotes, single and double, and I'm usually using them.

> they are typographically correct. According to an ancient convention. Conventions can be changed. It is not intrinsically, objectively superior to have two separate glyphs for a starting and ending quotation mark. I'd argue the opposite. It is needless complexity. Let us jettison it and embrace the simpler single glyph.

Convention doesn't mean bad. But sure, feel free to use ( for opening and closing parentheses.

Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#36

Post by smcameron »

Tomte wrote: post #35
smcameron wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are typographically correct. According to an ancient convention. Conventions can be changed. It is not intrinsically, objectively superior to have two separate glyphs for a starting and ending quotation mark. I'd argue the opposite. It is needless complexity. Let us jettison it and embrace the simpler single glyph.

Convention doesn't mean bad. But sure, feel free to use ( for opening and closing parentheses.

Disingenuous argument is disingenuous. To make that argument properly, you must also argue for putting both quotation marks on the keyboard as first class keys. And you must retro-actively revise ASCII to include them as first class characters.

Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#37

Post by Tomte »

smcameron wrote: post #36
Tomte wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convention doesn't mean bad. But sure, feel free to use ( for opening and closing parentheses.

Disingenuous argument is disingenuous. To make that argument properly, you must also argue for putting both quotation marks on the keyboard as first class keys. And you must retro-actively revise ASCII to include them as first class characters.

You're one AHK script away from that.

Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#38

Post by cortesoft »

Tomte wrote: post #28

They aren't smart or soft, they are typographically correct. On PC I have AutoHotKey bindings for German and English quotes, single and double, and I'm usually using them.

They might be typographically correct, but they are incorrect for code, and cause so many issues. I'd rather have typographically incorrect quotes that work everywhere.

Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#39

Post by Tomte »

cortesoft wrote: post #38
Tomte wrote: post #28

They aren't smart or soft, they are typographically correct. On PC I have AutoHotKey bindings for German and English quotes, single and double, and I'm usually using them.

They might be typographically correct, but they are incorrect for code, and cause so many issues. I'd rather have typographically incorrect quotes that work everywhere.

Why would you type them for code? I'm not arguing for the mobile phone automatisms. I insist on separate keys for different quotes.

Re: HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes

#40

Post by drran »

fuckstick wrote: post #26
xk3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

smart/soft quotes are usually: ‘|’|“|” but there are also other quoting glyphs in ASCII but especially UTF-8

Why are they soft or smart? That makes no sense - they’re just open and close quotation marks.

Because option to enable substitution of minutes(') and seconds(") symbols by proper quotation marks is often called as «Enable smart quotes».

For example: 10° 33' 19" -> 10° 33« 19». Very smart!

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