Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: [HEY TOM!] unhelpful error for unreadable directories

[Michael Poole]

Matthieu Moy writes:

> Andrew Suffield <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> ` is a backtick, not a quote. Stop abusing it as a quote. That only
>> works in tex, not C.
>
> We're talking  about user error messages. The  language doesn't matter
> for that. Language  is something internal to your  tool that shouldn't
> be shown to the user. 
>
> Wether you  write your software in  TeX[1], C, or  lisp mustn't change
> the interface of your software. 

Indeed.  By similar logic, user error messages should not pointlessly
conform to the standards of a language such as TeX when the user's
language has a preferred quoting style (be it English, French or some
other set).

If you wish for a separate reference, the Unicode standard says that '
is APOSTROPHE (but with U+2018 preferred for open quotation mark and
U+2019 preferred as an apostrophe or closing quotation mark) and ` is
GRAVE ACCENT (and not even the "similar characters" list mentions
quoting characters).

Michael Poole