Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: quotation characters]
If it's so hard to convince RMS that modern style is different, maybe it's easier to convince him to drop this subject. Please, no. It wasn't rms's idea to bring this up. It was ours (mine), and the reason is that GNU developers ask the question, repeatedly. I don't want to go back to him now and say forget it! Anyway, the current text (intentionally) has loopholes which let people do whatever they want. (Which they would, regardless.) Things that make sense to state in a standards document are things that The GNU standards are not much like POSIX or C or whatever. All I want to know is what I asked about the gnulib quote module ... Thanks, k ___ bug-gnulib mailing list bug-gnulib@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnulib
Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: quotation characters]
| the application domain. For example, if source code deals with
| the French Revolutionary calendar, it is OK if its literal strings
Sounds good, thanks.
I assume you mean punt the 'preferably'?
Actually I meant point out, ie, our text didn't just give `...' as one
option of many, but recommends it as the preferred one.
that quote doesn't suffice for all applications.
Right, but using the Gnulib modules is just one way to implement the
standard. I think he was concerned about the statement itself, ie, that
it mentions '...' as being ok.
Maybe we should just drop the text about '...' and ..., as it's kind
of implied. Thus:
In the C locale, GNU programs should stick to plain ASCII for
quotation characters in messages to users: preferably 0x60 (`) for
left quotes and 0x27 (') for right quotes. It is ok, but not
required, to use locale-specific quotes in other locales.
The Gnulib ...
Wdyt? It is tricky water to negotiate.
Thanks,
k
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Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: quotation characters]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Karl Berry) writes:
Maybe we should just drop the text about '...' and ..., as it's kind
of implied. Thus:
In the C locale, GNU programs should stick to plain ASCII for
quotation characters in messages to users: preferably 0x60 (`) for
left quotes and 0x27 (') for right quotes. It is ok, but not
required, to use locale-specific quotes in other locales.
Yes, I like that. It's simple and to the point.
In rereading
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2005-06/msg00096.html I
noticed one other minor wording problem. This line:
However, Latin1 is still not universally usable.
is not properly linked to the preceding text (which discusses a
problem with Latin1). I suggest changing However to Moreover.
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: quotation characters]
Here are rms's comments on our draft about the quote character stuff.
1) I don't know how to address his problem with domain at hand, please help?
2) I hope that if I point the preferably, and that gcc is using
'...', and that the rest of the world thinks ' is the standard, he
will let the text pass. Are there other arguments that might
persuade him?
3) I deleted the sentence. Draft appended.
Thanks,
k
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 15:57:57 -0400
From: Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Karl Berry)
Subject: Re: quotation characters
Sticking to the ASCII character set (plain text, 7-bit characters) is
preferred in GNU source code comments, text documents, and other
contexts, unless there is good reason to do something else because of
the domain at hand.
I am not sure what the domain at hand means. Please look for some
other way to say whatever it is.
In the C locale, GNU programs should stick to plain ASCII for
quotation characters in messages to users: preferably 0x60 (`) for
left quotes and 0x27 (') for right quotes. If using ` is unacceptable
in your application, other possibilities are using ' for both opening
and closing, or 0x22 () for both opening and closing. It is ok, but
not required, to use locale-specific quotes in other locales.
The @uref{http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/, Gnulib} @code{quote}
and @code{quotearg} modules provide a reasonably straightforward way
to support locale-specific quote characters, as well as taking care of
other issues, such as quoting a filename that itself contains a quote
character. See the Gnulib documentation for usage details.
I thought we were going to tell people to use `quote',
not just mention it as a possibility.
Latin1 does have paired standalone accents, but it seems
wrong in principle to abuse them as quotes.
We should not say this is a matter of principle.
It is purely a practical matter.
--
@node Character set
@section Character set
@cindex character set
@cindex encodings
@cindex ASCII characters
@cindex non-ASCII characters
Sticking to the ASCII character set (plain text, 7-bit characters) is
preferred in GNU source code comments, text documents, and other
contexts, unless there is good reason to do something else because of
the domain at hand.
If you need to use non-ASCII characters, for example to represent
names of contributors, you should normally stick with one encoding, as
one cannot in general mix encodings reliably.
@node Quote characters
@section Quote characters
@cindex quote characters
In the C locale, GNU programs should stick to plain ASCII for
quotation characters in messages to users: preferably 0x60 (`) for
left quotes and 0x27 (') for right quotes. If using ` is unacceptable
in your application, other possibilities are using ' for both opening
and closing, or 0x22 () for both opening and closing. It is ok, but
not required, to use locale-specific quotes in other locales.
The @pxxref{http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/, Gnulib} @code{quote}
and @code{quotearg} modules provide a reasonably straightforward way
to support locale-specific quote characters, as well as taking care of
other issues, such as quoting a filename that itself contains a quote
character. See the Gnulib documentation for usage details.
In any case, the documentation for your program should clearly specify
how it does quoting, if different than the preferred method of ` and
'. This is especially important if the output of your program is ever
likely to be parsed by another program.
Quotation characters are a difficult area in the computing world at this
time: there are no true left or right quote characters in ASCII, or even
Latin1; the ` character we use was standardized as a grave accent.
However, Latin1 is still not universally usable.
Unicode contains the unambiguous quote characters required, and its
common encoding UTF-8 is upward compatible with [EMAIL PROTECTED] However,
Unicode and UTF-8 are not universally well-supported, either.
This may change over the next few years, and then we will revisit
this.
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Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: quotation characters]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Karl Berry) writes: Here are rms's comments on our draft about the quote character stuff. 1) I don't know how to address his problem with domain at hand, please help? How about changing this: Sticking to the ASCII character set (plain text, 7-bit characters) is preferred in GNU source code comments, text documents, and other contexts, unless there is good reason to do something else because of the domain at hand. If you need to use non-ASCII characters, for example to represent names of contributors, you should normally stick with one encoding, as one cannot in general mix encodings reliably. to this (changebars at left): Sticking to the ASCII character set (plain text, 7-bit characters) is preferred in GNU source code comments, text documents, and other contexts, unless there is good reason to do something else because of | the application domain. For example, if source code deals with | the French Revolutionary calendar, it is OK if its literal strings | contain accented characters in month names like ``Flor@'eal''. | Also, it is OK to use non-ASCII characters to represent proper | names of contributors in change logs. | If you need to use non-ASCII characters, you should normally stick | with one encoding, as one cannot in general mix encodings reliably. I chose the French Revolutionary calendar as the example partly because emacs/lisp/calendar/cal-french.el is a precedent here. 2) I hope that if I point the preferably, and that gcc is using '...', and that the rest of the world thinks ' is the standard, he will let the text pass. Are there other arguments that might persuade him? I assume you mean punt the 'preferably'? But you can remind him that quote doesn't suffice for all applications. In particular, it isn't reentrant. Implementations that can assume a garbage collector (GCC is one example these days) should probably use something else, e.g., quotearg. ___ bug-gnulib mailing list bug-gnulib@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnulib
