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Re: [Groff] French punctuation


From: Peter Schaffter
Subject: Re: [Groff] French punctuation
Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 21:33:54 -0400
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17)

On Mon, May 17, 2010, Ted Harding wrote:
> .de FRpunct
> .char \[lq] \[Fo]\h'0.25n'
> .char \[rq] \h'0.25n'\[Fc]
> .char : \h'0.2n':\h'0.2n'
> .char ; \h'0.2n';\h'0.2n'
> .char ? \h'0.2n'?\h'0.2n'
> .char ! \h'0.2n'!\h'0.2n'
> .char \[em] \h'0.2n'\[em]\h'0.2n'
> ..
>
> NOTE: I have put in rather narrow extra space, because the
> text-boxes corresponding to the PPT slides are a bit cramped
> for space at times, and using wider spaces tends to cause
> the formatting to collapse.
> 
> With that caveat (and the possibility, for more general use,
> of using wider spacing -- 0.5n? 1n?), I would be grateful for
> comments on the suitability of the above definitions.
> Are they complete? Should any be different?

You haven't left anything out that I can see.  In terms of your
spacing definitions, the only thing you should be aware of is that
the colon needs a larger space before it than the others.  Expressed
in terms of wholespace and halfspace, the colon would be

  wholespace : <wordspace>

while everything else--say, a question mark-- would be

  halfspace ? <wordspace>

Note that there really isn't any need to define the space *after*
the punctuation; normal wordspacing applies.

I'm assuming you're not translating into Canadian French, which has
slightly different rules.

One last thing (I don't know if this applies): in dialogue,
guillements enclose the *whole* conversation, while the tiret
(em-dash or longer, with a space after it) is used to indicate new,
or a change of, speakers within it.
 
-- 
Peter Schaffter



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