5 ms·

I had a terrible time when someone used "smart quotes" (beautified Office quotation marks) in a configuration file. I believe this was only possible because the

I had a terrible time when someone used "smart quotes" (beautified Office quotation marks) in a configuration file. I believe this was only possible because they copied it from Outlook.

karagenit 3y ago
Yeah, I've been bitten by those quotes in the past too. I noticed recently that VSCode (probably other IDEs too) highlight these characters pretty clearly to help avoid these issues.
- jboy55 3y ago
  I wonder how much infighting there was between orgs at Microsoft over this. with an Outlook/Word PM escalating... "Make the languages understand smart quotes!"
atahanacar 3y ago
>smart quotes I never understood why a "stylistic" choice requires separate characters. If we don't need a serif and non-serif version of every character and instead leave it to the software, why can't we do the same with the "smart" quotes?
- kristjansson 3y ago
  Typographic quotes are left- and right-handed, vs. the ASCII double quote which is just a single character: “quoted” "quoted" Who in the blazing highs of techno-utopianism fervor thought it was a good idea to automatically translate the latter to the former we'll never know.
  - atahanacar 3y ago
    Why not stylize it as typographic but store it as a "regular" double quote though?
    - account42 3y ago
      One problem with that is that the correct start/end quotes to use depend on language which is not always know for all text snippets.
    - mbork_pl 3y ago
      How do you handle non-paired ones then?
      - maleldil 3y ago
        Render them as standard double quotes? The same way Markdown renders a single backtick as just a backtick, but text surrounded by backticks becomes code.
        mbork_pl 3y ago
        Nice try, but the problem with this is that typography is _really_ complex. For example, there is a rule in English typography (I'm not sure if it's often used today though) that when you have a quotation spanning several paragraphs, you should put an _opening_ quote at the beginning of each paragraph – but only one _closing_ one at the end of the quote.
        yencabulator 3y ago
        We've let go of other historical typographic and spelling conventions, it's time to let go of that one too.
        kristjansson 3y ago
        Computers exist to represent, transmit, and display _human_ communications. If a computer system cannot represent a human utterance we should extend the representational capacity of the computer system, not force the human to conform to the limitations of the technology.
        3y ago
  - tuetuopay 3y ago
    I'm french and I actually really like the auto-translation. This way software that does not care about which quote those are (mail, web, etc) can swap them, and where it matters then it does not translates it (vim, etc). Sadly the new official french azerty keyboard has dedicated keys for both opening and closing quotes, and the good ol' simple quote tucked away behind modifier keys. As a dev I hate it. (arguably I should not even use azerty for development but that's another issue)
- jotaen 3y ago
  > I never understood why a "stylistic" choice requires separate characters. I don’t think it’s a purely stylistic choice, there is actually semantics to it: “ opening quotation mark, i.e.: starts the quote ” closing quotation mark, i.e.: ends the quote You could otherwise make the same point about parenthesis: why not just |do this| instead (of this)?
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  It's not a stylistic choice. Opening quotes and closing quotes are different things, and it isn't possible to tell the difference (when not already provided) without parsing the language in which they're used. That's why in TeX you have to manually specify which kind you want, and in software like Wordpress that just guesses, the guess is usually wrong and your published text looks ridiculous.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    The complaint was purely about software replacing normal quotes with "smart quotes", not that it did it wrong.
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      But the question was why there's more than one code point between normal quotes, left quotes, and right quotes, and the answer is that it isn't possible for left and right quotes to share a code point.
- mgdlbp 3y ago
  "quote unification'': most typefaces: “Hello” „Hallo“ Verdana: “Hello” „Hallo“
- o11c 3y ago
  Double quotes can be unambiguously autodetected by checking word boundaries, but separate single quotes are needed since apostrophe is the same character as a close quote, but can appear at the start of a word. Note that most smart-quote-generating software does fail badly at this. Some common ambiguous pairs: ’bout - abbreviation for "about" ‘bout - starting a quote about a round of a fight ’cause - abbreviation for "because" ‘cause - starting a quote about a reason or ideal ’em - abbreviation for "them" ‘em - starting a quote about typographical units ’n’ - abbreviation for "and" ‘n’ - speaking of the letter itself
euroderf 3y ago
For a long time there was a Perl script called the Demoronizer that fixed this kind of nonsense.
selimthegrim 3y ago
I think this pops up in MacOS shells too
- dblitt 3y ago
  IIRC TextEdit.app has options like smart quotes, auto capitalize, and spell check turned on (in addition to being rich text by default), so you have to change all those to be a dumb plain text editor.
  - fishyjoe 3y ago
    TextEdit and the Notes app have both caused me to copy/paste the specialized quotation marks. Now I only use vim as a scratchpad because I've been bitten too much by GUI apps
keybored 3y ago
In other words real quotes that people use in published writing.

I had a terrible time when someone used "smart quotes" (beautified Office quotation marks) in a configuration file. I believe this was only possible because they copied it from Outlook.

karagenit 3y ago

Yeah, I've been bitten by those quotes in the past too. I noticed recently that VSCode (probably other IDEs too) highlight these characters pretty clearly to help avoid these issues.

jboy55 3y ago
I wonder how much infighting there was between orgs at Microsoft over this. with an Outlook/Word PM escalating... "Make the languages understand smart quotes!"

atahanacar 3y ago

>smart quotes I never understood why a "stylistic" choice requires separate characters. If we don't need a serif and non-serif version of every character and instead leave it to the software, why can't we do the same with the "smart" quotes?

kristjansson 3y ago
Typographic quotes are left- and right-handed, vs. the ASCII double quote which is just a single character: “quoted” "quoted" Who in the blazing highs of techno-utopianism fervor thought it was a good idea to automatically translate the latter to the former we'll never know.
- atahanacar 3y ago
  Why not stylize it as typographic but store it as a "regular" double quote though?
  - account42 3y ago
    One problem with that is that the correct start/end quotes to use depend on language which is not always know for all text snippets.
  - mbork_pl 3y ago
    How do you handle non-paired ones then?
    - maleldil 3y ago
      Render them as standard double quotes? The same way Markdown renders a single backtick as just a backtick, but text surrounded by backticks becomes code.
      - mbork_pl 3y ago
        Nice try, but the problem with this is that typography is _really_ complex. For example, there is a rule in English typography (I'm not sure if it's often used today though) that when you have a quotation spanning several paragraphs, you should put an _opening_ quote at the beginning of each paragraph – but only one _closing_ one at the end of the quote.
        yencabulator 3y ago
        We've let go of other historical typographic and spelling conventions, it's time to let go of that one too.
        kristjansson 3y ago
        Computers exist to represent, transmit, and display _human_ communications. If a computer system cannot represent a human utterance we should extend the representational capacity of the computer system, not force the human to conform to the limitations of the technology.
        3y ago
- tuetuopay 3y ago
  I'm french and I actually really like the auto-translation. This way software that does not care about which quote those are (mail, web, etc) can swap them, and where it matters then it does not translates it (vim, etc). Sadly the new official french azerty keyboard has dedicated keys for both opening and closing quotes, and the good ol' simple quote tucked away behind modifier keys. As a dev I hate it. (arguably I should not even use azerty for development but that's another issue)
jotaen 3y ago
> I never understood why a "stylistic" choice requires separate characters. I don’t think it’s a purely stylistic choice, there is actually semantics to it: “ opening quotation mark, i.e.: starts the quote ” closing quotation mark, i.e.: ends the quote You could otherwise make the same point about parenthesis: why not just |do this| instead (of this)?
thaumasiotes 3y ago
It's not a stylistic choice. Opening quotes and closing quotes are different things, and it isn't possible to tell the difference (when not already provided) without parsing the language in which they're used. That's why in TeX you have to manually specify which kind you want, and in software like Wordpress that just guesses, the guess is usually wrong and your published text looks ridiculous.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  The complaint was purely about software replacing normal quotes with "smart quotes", not that it did it wrong.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    But the question was why there's more than one code point between normal quotes, left quotes, and right quotes, and the answer is that it isn't possible for left and right quotes to share a code point.
mgdlbp 3y ago
"quote unification'': most typefaces: “Hello” „Hallo“ Verdana: “Hello” „Hallo“
o11c 3y ago
Double quotes can be unambiguously autodetected by checking word boundaries, but separate single quotes are needed since apostrophe is the same character as a close quote, but can appear at the start of a word. Note that most smart-quote-generating software does fail badly at this. Some common ambiguous pairs: ’bout - abbreviation for "about" ‘bout - starting a quote about a round of a fight ’cause - abbreviation for "because" ‘cause - starting a quote about a reason or ideal ’em - abbreviation for "them" ‘em - starting a quote about typographical units ’n’ - abbreviation for "and" ‘n’ - speaking of the letter itself

euroderf 3y ago

For a long time there was a Perl script called the Demoronizer that fixed this kind of nonsense.

selimthegrim 3y ago

I think this pops up in MacOS shells too

dblitt 3y ago
IIRC TextEdit.app has options like smart quotes, auto capitalize, and spell check turned on (in addition to being rich text by default), so you have to change all those to be a dumb plain text editor.
- fishyjoe 3y ago
  TextEdit and the Notes app have both caused me to copy/paste the specialized quotation marks. Now I only use vim as a scratchpad because I've been bitten too much by GUI apps

keybored 3y ago

In other words real quotes that people use in published writing.