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I'm pretty sure text like: ``quoted'' Is how you're supposed to write short quotes in the TeX/LaTeX typesetting system. [edit: My point being that the auth
by peapicker 9y ago
I'm pretty sure text like:
``quoted''
Is how you're supposed to write short quotes in the TeX/LaTeX typesetting system.
[edit: My point being that the author seems to think this type of quoting originated with X11... which is actually newer than TeX (X11 was first released in 1984), and that the prevalence of this type of quoting likely originated
with TeX when it was released in 1978... which isn't mentioned at all in the article. In fact, since TeX/LaTeX is what all the CS, Physics, and Math types were using for journal articles, it is likely the X11 font bitmap glyphs were intentionally shaped like curly quotes to make editing your TeX source files prettier.
At least, that's how I remember it...]
- ams6110 9y agoYeah but that gets rendered as the proper quote glyph in the final document.
- ISL 9y agoIt is, and denotes opening and closing quotes.
- dheera 9y agoI always hated this horribly inconsistency. \left( \right) \left{ \right} `` '' Why not \left" \right" \left' \right' Better yet, make it completely DRY: \( \) \{ \} \`` \'' \` \'
- gbacon 9y agoAnother giveaway of a TeX-savvy writer out of water is when you see --- for em-dash, i.e., ‘—’.
- gbacon 9y agoDoes HN markdown understand — or ‘? EDIT: Nope.
- koolba 9y agoIt doesn't need to. You can put the mdash directly in comments: — As opposed to regular dash: -
- PeterisP 9y agoWell, since my keyboard doesn't have an mdash key, if there's no support for something like — or --- then I can't use mdashes.
- SaladFork 9y agoAt least on the US keyboard, Mac OS lets you input all three dash types. Hitting the button to the right of [0] outputs a hyphen ("-"). Holding alt/option when hitting it will output an en dash ("–"), holding both alt/option and shift will output an em dash ("—"). - = - ⌥- = – ⇧⌥- = —
- leephillips 9y agoNobody's keyboard had an em-dash key (well, maybe some compositor keyboards...). It's well worth the time to figure out how to enter at least the most useful Unicode characters. See, here's an em-dash: —.
- Symbiote 9y agoLinux users should enable the compose key, it's very useful. Test it with: setxkbmap -option compose:menu Then press the menu/compose key (next to right control), then C, then =. You get €. Try compose, 1, 2 for ½. Compose, ^, 3 for ³. Compose, A, : for Ä. It's pretty intuitive for the most useful characters, and easily the fastest way I have of typing the ö, ñ and å in various colleagues' names.
- YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y agoWorth noting that international layouts (with dead keys) support many of those without the use of compose key (for obvious reasons not your first example – but the € symbol has its own key combination at least where it's commonly used). I admit it might be hard to adjust to caret being a dead key, though.
- leephillips 9y agoInteresting historical note. Of course that's TeX input, and the author using it knows that it will be interpreted in TeX's special way and the correct characters used in the typeset output. Also, with the current Unicode-aware TeX engines, you can just input the normal Unicode quotation marks. That makes your source easier to read.
- dungle6 9y agoThe author (Markus Kuhn) almost certainly knows about this (I assume based on his prolificness in publishing tech documents nearly 20 years ago). But the use of grave accent is sort of a different problem since it is merely the input to the TeX language that is then properly interpreted in a correct way. I do wonder about your story of X11, since although when X11 was released in 1984 LaTeX was not a thing and TeX did not have quite the widespread usage it did through the 90s. troff also uses grave accents for what it is worth. Oh and see this article: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/apostrophe.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/apostrophe.html. It specifically mentions TeX.
- fish_fan 9y agoThat's because single quotes used to be rendered as a right single quote (as you might have in a contraction), and the backtick was angled much less aggressively. That is, it looked much more natural at the time.
- emmelaich 9y agoYeah, I think the motivation for `' is for markup too. I'm pretty sure they've been recommended in GNU info and groff for that reason.