RE: [Groff] German quotation marks in ms

[Ted Harding]

On 19-Aug-07 12:31:34, Axel Kielhorn wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I'm writing a german document in ms and I'm wondering about the best 
> way to enter quotation marks.
> 
> Should I
> .ds Q \(Bq
> .ds U \(lq
> and use
> \*Q \*U?
> 
> or can I simply use ,,and''?
> 
> The later is much easier to type (and read) and the result looks the 
> same.
> 
> Axel

Use whichever is most acceptable! There is a very slight difference
between \[Bq] and ,, : to get ,, to be exactly like \[Bq] you must

a) Move the first "," leftwards by pointsize*0.0012 points
b) Then move the second leftwards by pointsize*0.002 points.

I.e., in 25-point text:  \h'-0.3p',\h'-0.5p',

This is unlikely to be visible in normal documents.

You could use the "smartquotes" method devised by Werner Lemberg.
This was originally defined in terms of the usual \[lq]...\[rq].
the version I have in my personal macros defines

.de smartq
.ds dblq0 \(lq
.ds dblq1 \(rq
.nr dblqn 0
.char " \\\\*[dblq\\\\n[dblqn]]\\R'dblqn (1 - \\\\n[dblqn])'
..
.de /smartq
.rchar "
..

Then when you want to turn on smart-quoting, you put

.smartq

After that, every instance of the keyboard couble-quote " is
alterntiely \[lq] and \[rq].

Then, if you want to turn it off,

./smartq

You can achieve the same with your \[Bq] with the macro

.de smartq
.ds dblq0 \(Bq
.ds dblq1 \(rq
.nr dblqn 0
.char " \\\\*[dblq\\\\n[dblqn]]\\R'dblqn (1 - \\\\n[dblqn])'
..

and then

  "Hier ist ein Beispiel"

comes out as if you had typed

  \[Bq]Hier ist ein Beispiel\[rq]

which wouold be exactly what you want -- and no fiddling!

The one point to watch is that if, for any reason, you need
to have an opening " (\[Bq]) without a matching closing " (\[r]),
or a closing " (\[rq]) without a matching opening " (\[Bq]),
then in subsequent quoted phrases  " ... " they will be the
wrong way round.

You can solve this by printing a dummy " in the middle of nowhere,
e.g. by inserting

  \Z'\h'-100c'"'

anywhere in your text to bring things back into phase. It would be
unusual if something printed 1 metre to the left of your page
would be visible in your output!

Indeed, a neat way of entering this would be to define

.char \[""] \Z'\h'-100c'"'

and then all you need to type is something like

  Here I want to bring the quotes\[""] back into phase

For example:


.smartq
.LP
"This is a Quote"
.LP
Here we get " out of phase
.LP
.LP
"This is a Quote"
.LP
And here we get\[""] back into phase
.LP
"This is a Quote"


Hoping this helps,
Ted.

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Date: 21-Aug-07                                       Time: 15:30:37
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