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I agree that it should be left as a double hyphen, but an en dash is far more appropriate considering the decades-long precedent set by LaTeX (and continued by

I agree that it should be left as a double hyphen, but an en dash is far more appropriate considering the decades-long precedent set by LaTeX (and continued by Typst).

ajross 6mo ago
It's a command line argument. The undeniably correct way to render it is with two minus signs[1] and absolutely not something non-ascii. [1] Not strictly a hyphen, which has its own unicode point (0x2010) outside of ascii. Unicode embraced the ambiguity by calling this point (0x2d) "HYPHEN-MINUS" formally, but really its only unique typographic usage is to represent subtraction.
- minitech 6mo ago
  They meant “more appropriate [than an em dash]”. And that minus sign usage of hyphen-minus isn’t unique in Unicode either – see U+2212 MINUS SIGN.
  - ajross 6mo ago
    But... it's not more appropriate than an em dash for representing command line arguments? I don't see how either is any more incorrect than the other. There's a uniquely correct answer here and the em-dash is not it. Period.
    - minitech 6mo ago
      It’s about the top-level comment’s horror that ”--” was substituted with “an en dash, not even an em dash”. If you’re picking a substitution for “--”, en dash makes more sense. The comment you originally replied to had already agreed “that it should be left as a double hyphen”.
      - ajross 6mo ago
        > If you’re picking a substitution for “--”, en dash makes more sense. No, it doesn't? This seems like crazy talk to me, like "If you're picking a substitute for saffron, blood plasma makes more sense than monocrystalline silicon". Like, what? It makes zero sense to substitute this at all. It's exactly what it says it is, the "--hard" command line option to "git reset", and you write it in exactly one way.
        minitech 6mo ago
        Nobody is confused or disagrees about the `--hard` part. It was a minor tangent about contexts where these ASCII substitutions are established, like LaTeX (`` -> “, '' -> ”, -- -> –, --- -> —, etc.)
- dragonwriter 6mo ago
  > The undeniably correct way to render it is with two minus signs[1] and absolutely not something non-ascii. > [1] Not strictly a hyphen, which has its own unicode point (0x2010) outside of ascii. Unicode embraced the ambiguity by calling this point (0x2d) "HYPHEN-MINUS" formally, but really its only unique typographic usage is to represent subtraction. Strictly, its as you note, the hyphen-minus, and Unicode has separate, disambiguated code points for both hyphen (0x2010) and minus (0x2212); hyphen-minus has no "unique typographic usage".
  - ajross 6mo ago
    I said that badly. What I meant was that ASCII 0x2d is, in fact, used as the only minus sign in basically all markup and presentation layers. (Mostly because math layout tends to go through its own interpreter -- what lives in "the unicode text" is always "markup" of some kind). The unicode value is ignored AFAIK, nothing emits it or interprets it specially. That is not true of the hyphen, which does get special treatment at the presentation layer in fonts and whatnot.
- lynx97 6mo ago
  The "sed" expressions that power the title "cleanup" here do overshoot quite often. It ruins --long-command-arguments and it definitely also reuins cpp::namespaces. Quite curious why these obvious shortcomings are not being fixed.
- bluedel 6mo ago
  It's not a command line argument, it's part of the title of a hackernews post.

I agree that it should be left as a double hyphen, but an en dash is far more appropriate considering the decades-long precedent set by LaTeX (and continued by Typst).

ajross 6mo ago

It's a command line argument. The undeniably correct way to render it is with two minus signs[1] and absolutely not something non-ascii. [1] Not strictly a hyphen, which has its own unicode point (0x2010) outside of ascii. Unicode embraced the ambiguity by calling this point (0x2d) "HYPHEN-MINUS" formally, but really its only unique typographic usage is to represent subtraction.

minitech 6mo ago
They meant “more appropriate [than an em dash]”. And that minus sign usage of hyphen-minus isn’t unique in Unicode either – see U+2212 MINUS SIGN.
- ajross 6mo ago
  But... it's not more appropriate than an em dash for representing command line arguments? I don't see how either is any more incorrect than the other. There's a uniquely correct answer here and the em-dash is not it. Period.
  - minitech 6mo ago
    It’s about the top-level comment’s horror that ”--” was substituted with “an en dash, not even an em dash”. If you’re picking a substitution for “--”, en dash makes more sense. The comment you originally replied to had already agreed “that it should be left as a double hyphen”.
    - ajross 6mo ago
      > If you’re picking a substitution for “--”, en dash makes more sense. No, it doesn't? This seems like crazy talk to me, like "If you're picking a substitute for saffron, blood plasma makes more sense than monocrystalline silicon". Like, what? It makes zero sense to substitute this at all. It's exactly what it says it is, the "--hard" command line option to "git reset", and you write it in exactly one way.
      - minitech 6mo ago
        Nobody is confused or disagrees about the `--hard` part. It was a minor tangent about contexts where these ASCII substitutions are established, like LaTeX (`` -> “, '' -> ”, -- -> –, --- -> —, etc.)
dragonwriter 6mo ago
> The undeniably correct way to render it is with two minus signs[1] and absolutely not something non-ascii. > [1] Not strictly a hyphen, which has its own unicode point (0x2010) outside of ascii. Unicode embraced the ambiguity by calling this point (0x2d) "HYPHEN-MINUS" formally, but really its only unique typographic usage is to represent subtraction. Strictly, its as you note, the hyphen-minus, and Unicode has separate, disambiguated code points for both hyphen (0x2010) and minus (0x2212); hyphen-minus has no "unique typographic usage".
- ajross 6mo ago
  I said that badly. What I meant was that ASCII 0x2d is, in fact, used as the only minus sign in basically all markup and presentation layers. (Mostly because math layout tends to go through its own interpreter -- what lives in "the unicode text" is always "markup" of some kind). The unicode value is ignored AFAIK, nothing emits it or interprets it specially. That is not true of the hyphen, which does get special treatment at the presentation layer in fonts and whatnot.
lynx97 6mo ago
The "sed" expressions that power the title "cleanup" here do overshoot quite often. It ruins --long-command-arguments and it definitely also reuins cpp::namespaces. Quite curious why these obvious shortcomings are not being fixed.
bluedel 6mo ago
It's not a command line argument, it's part of the title of a hackernews post.