Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 85 posts

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

#71

Post by robin_reala »

robin_reala wrote: post #56

I just type them in? On a Mac it’s as difficult to type a typographically correct quote as it is to type a dumb quote, just a modifier and a key. OK, so it’s not labelled, but if you know how, why wouldn’t you?

Realised I should have provided some reference (and too late to edit my initial post). On an en-Intl Mac keyboard:

“ = option + [

” = option + shift + [

‘ = option + ]

’ = option + shift + ]

There’s a few others I use regularly as well:

… = option + ;

– (en dash) = option + -

— (em dash) = option + shift + -

Then there’s a bunch of accent meta keys, so you can use option + c for façade, option + e, e for fiancé, and option + u, i for naïve.

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

#72

Post by rogual »

drfuchs wrote: post #18

This has been driving me nuts for decades: "Smart Quotes" first appeared as the name of a feature of interactive document editing tools, wherein the user would always keyboard the "vertical" single or double quote ASCII character, and the software would look at the context of where that quote character was being inserted, and choose the correct "left-quote" or "right-quote" character to actually insert into the docum…

As a Brit I always used to interpret "Smart Quotes" with the old-fashioned definition of smart that some people still use here, i.e. presentable, nice-looking, clean-cut.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

altisome wrote: post #44

This is the first time I'm hearing the term 'smart quotes' or 'soft quotes'. I googled to see what it is and all I got was some 'smart' quotes. There's an obscure Wiktionary page on smart quotes which also does not really explain what it is. The GitHub page being linked itself is so vague and cryptic it's hard to understand what is even talked about. To all those who are confused, smart quotes or soft quotes are thos…

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by wahnfrieden »

Manu40 wrote: post #55
wahnfrieden wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s an old gatekeeping / geek dick measuring thing, don’t worry about it

I'm upvoting you, because calling it disturbing really doesn't make sense unless egotism is involved. IMHO. If someone can explain why it's not just egotism, please go right ahead. Otherwise, it really does seem like it. To me at least. Other comments try to sort of deal with this problem in their explanations about soft and hard quotes, but they don't really deal with the part about it being disturbing. What's so di…

It is egotism

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

#75

Post by leephillips »

This is kind of sloppy; some of the conclusions don’t follow from the data, because the regexes aren’t carefully constructed. I didn’t read much of it, but in the first one he’s captured all sentences beginning with Intelligent, Intellectual, Intelligence, etc. This could have been made more precise by just including a [. ] after Intel.

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

#76

Post by flobosg »

somat wrote: post #60
flobosg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

read up on the compose key it may change your life for the better. or it may be difficult to replicate on windows/wayland leading to additional stress in your life. or perhaps you enjoy your current setup, which does not sound half bad, although not as good as the compose key. Most linux desktops are different and more complicated but here is how I set mine up on openbsd. pick a key that is handy but you don't use mu…

I am aware of the Compose key, but have yet to find a good key to map to it (I use AltGr for third and fourth level characters already). I’ll keep it in mind in case my setup breaks down in the future.

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

#77

Post by lupire »

svat wrote: post #53
D13Fd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “smart quotes” is fine as a name, since most people who type them still do it automatically via a context-based logic (whether it’s a word processor or text box input on an iPhone). And it works better than “curly quotes” since they are not curly in some fonts. If you’re going to be pedantic, I’m not sure that “left-quote” or “right-quote” is correct either. Shouldn’t it be “left double quotation mark” or “ri…

I know you said “most people”, but I always type these typographically correct quotes manually (no automatic substitution or “smart” quotes involved). It's Opt+[ (etc) on macOS, for example. So the name is disorienting for me at least, and as the top comment said, they predate computers and weren't called “smart” then. But see also https://smartquotesforsmartpeople.com/ :-)

If you learn them as "double quote brackets" just like "round brackets", "square brackets", "angle brackets", and "curly brackets" then the key name is not disorienting.

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

#78

Post by xk3 »

leephillips wrote: post #75

This is kind of sloppy; some of the conclusions don’t follow from the data, because the regexes aren’t carefully constructed. I didn’t read much of it, but in the first one he’s captured all sentences beginning with Intelligent, Intellectual, Intelligence, etc. This could have been made more precise by just including a [. ] after Intel.

> in the first one he’s captured all sentences beginning with Intelligent, Intellectual, Intelligence

This is simply not true. Look at the files in the repo directly

Intel is ^Intel$. The nouns are separated by word boundaries

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

#79

Post by leephillips »

xk3 wrote: post #78
leephillips wrote: post #75

This is kind of sloppy; some of the conclusions don’t follow from the data, because the regexes aren’t carefully constructed. I didn’t read much of it, but in the first one he’s captured all sentences beginning with Intelligent, Intellectual, Intelligence, etc. This could have been made more precise by just including a [. ] after Intel.

> in the first one he’s captured all sentences beginning with Intelligent, Intellectual, Intelligence This is simply not true. Look at the files in the repo directly Intel is ^Intel$. The nouns are separated by word boundaries

I’m going by the article, in which they aren’t.

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

#80

Post by leephillips »

xk3 wrote: post #21
koolba wrote: post #17

Does the “Intel” filter also catch titles with: Intelligen[t|ce]?

Intel is ^Intel$. The nouns are separated by word boundaries. Feel free to explore the files in the repo

Several commenters have pointed out these defects in the regexes reported in the article, and you’ve replied by telling us that, in addition to all its other faults, it misrepresents the code it’s supposedly describing; in my case going as far as to tell me that I’m wrong. This whole thing is wasting the time of anyone who makes the mistake of thinking it might be interesting.
Post reply on HN