On Fri, Nov 09, 2001 at 06:59:36AM +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote: > I have dealt with international quotes for quite some time. More > important than doing cosmetics now is it to unify strings with in > program message. We need rules when to quote file names, option > switches, program names and how to do it. At the moment these occur > (from memory): > > Please, check %s > Please, check file %s > Please, check file '%s' > Please, check file `%s' > Please, check file "%s" > Please, check file "%s". > > Use --foo-switch and pipe through sed > Use --foo-switch and pipe through "sed" > Use `--foo-switch' and pipe through "sed" > etc. > > Consider to join the [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailinglist and take actions to discuss > these topics.
I'm not currently interested in those topics. What does any of this have to do with this thread? > > I tend to prefer having features default to enabled if they're usable > > by fully compliant clients--those with broken clients (even if they're > > currently the majority) can disable it. > > It isn't nice to bug users with features; write good documentation, > don't force the user to do it your way. You may change the defaults for > the next _major_ release and announce the change properly (e.g., via the > NEWS file). Hence giving a method to disable features users might not want; a method to do this has already been shown. When such changes can be made is up to the individual developer; I don't consider this to be a major change, so I would probably put it in a minor release. If you disagree, feel free to use your own judgment, in your own projects. > How will come “ and ” out if the user's terminal doesn't support UTF-8? > Transliterated as `` ... ''? That's worse than just "..."! BTW, it's > arguable whether one really want to have open and close quotes for > computer related strings like file names or option. IMO, those advanced > quotes should be reserved for citations (G. Nannini says: “È già > domani.”). Gettext translates them to ". Why should they be reserved for citations? I like them in "computer related strings", and I'm not alone here. If you don't like them ... turn them off. > > It means people know about the feature; lots of useful stuff goes > > unused because it's not known. (How many people would add -F to their > > "ls" alias if their distribution didn't do it for them?) > > That one of the "features" that confuses users in the beginning :) Er, I've never seen anyone confused by it, especially when combined with color-ls. (Of course, I've heard of people being confused by having to click "start" in Windows in order to shut down; some people are confused by anything. :) > > This helps get stuff implemented, too: people see it, decide they like > > it, and push to get it implemented in their software. (This is > > particularly true for things like this, where it's trivial to fall > > back on, in this case, regular ASCII quotes if real quotes aren't > > available.) > > As explained above, it will do more harm than good (-> ``...''). And As explained above, as implemented here, it will do no harm whatsoever (-> "...", at least when LANG=C.) (Yes, I tested this before even posting it here, as it was a fundamental prerequisite that this not make non-UTF-8 use ugly.) > even if it were displayed correctly, chances are big that the font > doesn't look nice. My default font displays " much better than ” -- the > latter is to small, too dense, too slanted, and someho boldish. This is a client problem. If you refuse to fix your font, disable the characters. > Please, don't push nobody. I'm not. (I certainly feel pushed, however.) -- Glenn Maynard -- Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
