quotation marks in HTML output

Giorgos Keramidas keramida at FreeBSD.org
Fri Mar 28 03:01:03 UTC 2003


On 2003-03-27 13:37, "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear at attbi.com> wrote:
> Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at FreeBSD.org> writes:
> > For these reasons, I'd probably support switching to double quotes
> > like "...." for HTML output.  But only for HTML output.
>
> Unless the FDP is trying to support some REALLY old browsers, HTML
> should use the "&#8220" and "&#8221" (Unicode) entities for left and
> right double quotation marks (with "&#8216" and "&#8217" for the single
> versions).  The FDP should not support such old browsers.  I'm fairly
> sure that all Netscape and M$ browsers less than 5 years old support
> these four Unicode entities.

Gary, this sounds like a great idea :-)

I've replaced literal `` and '' in doc/share/sgml with these entities
and just finished a full rebuild of doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/.

: Index: freebsd.dsl
: ===================================================================
: RCS file: /home/giorgos/cvsroot/giorgos/fx/doc/share/sgml/freebsd.dsl,v
: retrieving revision 1.1.1.2
: diff -u -r1.1.1.2 freebsd.dsl
: --- freebsd.dsl	16 Feb 2003 22:12:04 -0000	1.1.1.2
: +++ freebsd.dsl	28 Mar 2003 02:42:25 -0000
: @@ -722,9 +722,9 @@
:  
:        (element errorname
:          (make sequence
: -          <![ %output.html;  [ (literal "``") ]]>
: +          <![ %output.html;  [ (literal "“") ]]>
:            ($mono-seq$ (process-children))
: -          <![ %output.html;  [ (literal "''") ]]>
: +          <![ %output.html;  [ (literal "'”") ]]>
:            ))
:  
:        <!-- John Fieber's 'instant' translation specification had 
: Index: freebsd.dtd
: ===================================================================
: RCS file: /home/giorgos/cvsroot/giorgos/fx/doc/share/sgml/freebsd.dtd,v
: retrieving revision 1.1.1.1
: diff -u -r1.1.1.1 freebsd.dtd
: --- freebsd.dtd	26 Nov 2002 22:05:49 -0000	1.1.1.1
: +++ freebsd.dtd	28 Mar 2003 02:39:24 -0000
: @@ -57,10 +57,10 @@
:  
:  <![ %output.html; [
:  <!ENTITY bdquo  ",,">
: -<!ENTITY ldquo  "``">
: -<!ENTITY rdquo  "''">
: -<!ENTITY lsquo  "`">
: -<!ENTITY rsquo  "'">
: +<!ENTITY ldquo  "“">
: +<!ENTITY rdquo  "”">
: +<!ENTITY lsquo  "‘">
: +<!ENTITY rsquo  "’">
:  <!ENTITY mdash  "--">
:  <!ENTITY ndash  "-">
:  <!ENTITY hellip "...">

> As for text format files, I've never liked ``this'', even in the good
> old days when the glyphs were often symmetrical; today it's usually
> uglier, even on most Unix/X11 systems.  "This" looks better, even when
> the quotes are both right-leaning curly ones, which they seldom were
> in the good old days and which they almost never are today.

Testing with links and w3m shows that they both parse the $# entities
fr double quotes correctly, and use the "..." style for double quotes.
I'll run some more tests tomorrow, and then mail doceng@ to see what
their view is.  There seems to be a problem with the single quote
entities and links (w3m works fine with single quote versions too).

In the meantime, anyone who wants to test the diff above and report to
me with private mail or to the list, is most welcome.

- Giorgos



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