Package: mozilla-browser
Version: 2:1.7.8-1sarge1
Severity: normal
According to the W3C, <Q> and </Q> tags are supposed to delimit short
in-line quotations, using the appropriate left- and right- quote
punctuation marks (see
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#edef-Q
for the official description). Unfortunately, the example they offer
is misleading, as it uses a ``typewriter'' font in which both left and
right double-quotes are represented by the same <"> character -- which
is what mozilla is using.
The W3C text above the rendering example says:
User agents should render quotation marks in a language-sensitive manner
(see the lang attribute). Many languages adopt different quotation
styles for outer and inner (nested) quotations, which should be
respected by user-agents.
... and their example emphasizes the alternation of single and double
quotes, for cases where there are quotes-within-quotes.
However, it's equally important (and ``language-sensitive'') to use the
correct left- and right- double-quote and single-quote characters.
The double-quote marks are listed in the HTML 4.01 Entity Table
as “ and ” respectively. And in fact, mozilla *does*
render these entities correctly, as nice curly quote-marks, not little
accent-marks or primes.
This matter is discussed in several Web pages, such as:
http://www.saila.com/attic/sandbox/quotes.html
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/quotes-in-html.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-doc/2003-March/000006.html
and it's also well discussed down toward the end of the classical
article
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/emen/
Inasmuch as the browser already has to keep track of the opening and
closing of quotations, to determine where a quoted-quotation begins and
ends, the information should already be available to place opening <``>
and closing <''> double [and single, presumably] quotation marks in the
appropriate places.
The only tricky thing is the language-sensitive part, I think.
-- A. T. Young
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-2-k7
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Versions of packages mozilla-browser depends on:
ii debconf 1.4.30.13 Debian configuration management sy
ii libatk1.0-0 1.8.0-4 The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii libfontconfig1 2.3.1-2 generic font configuration library
ii libfreetype6 2.1.7-2.4 FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii libgcc1 1:3.4.3-13 GCC support library
ii libglib2.0-0 2.6.4-1 The GLib library of C routines
ii libgtk2.0-0 2.6.4-3 The GTK+ graphical user interface
ii libkrb53 1.3.6-2sarge2 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries
ii libnspr4 2:1.7.8-1sarge1 Netscape Portable Runtime Library
ii libpango1.0-0 1.8.1-1 Layout and rendering of internatio
ii libstdc++5 1:3.3.5-13 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii libx11-6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System protocol client li
ii libxext6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System miscellaneous exte
ii libxft2 2.1.7-1 FreeType-based font drawing librar
ii libxp6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System printing extension
ii libxrender1 0.8.3-7 X Rendering Extension client libra
ii libxt6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Toolkit Intrinsics
ii psmisc 21.5-1 Utilities that use the proc filesy
ii xlibs 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Keyboard Extension (XKB) configu
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.2-4.sarge.2 compression library - runtime
-- debconf information:
* mozilla/dsp: none
mozilla/locale_auto: true
* mozilla/gdkxft_note:
* mozilla/prefs_note:
* mozilla/freetype: false
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