Re: [Groff] gkurz, a short introduction for german users

[Tadziu Hoffmann]

> About half of that document is about my pet peeve, the
> quotation marks:-)

While we're discussing german quotes I'd like to point out
a potential pitfall: even though in many fonts you can use
the english left quote as german right quote, *this is not
true in all cases* (see attached picture).  In particular
several widely used sans-serif fonts (Tahoma and Verdana) use
"Courier-style" quotes (for want of a better term), but the
german Word seems to assume it can *always* use the english
left quote as the german right quote.  Since this is done
automatically by Word's "smart quote" feature (and many users
lack the typographical sensitivity to question its decisions),
we see the ghastly results appearing practically everywhere.

To avoid this, you need to decide what characters to use as
quotes on a per-font basis. (None of the Postscript fonts I
know have dedicated german quotes. Does Unicode?)  Attached
is a solution that defines the german quotes as \(Bq and \(lq,
but lets you override this for specific fonts.

.\"
.fp 1 Times-Bold
.fp 2 Courier-Bold
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.\" in most fonts, we can use english left quote as german right quote
.schar \(Go \(Bq
.schar \(Gc \(lq
.schar \(go \(bq
.schar \(gc \(oq
.\" doesn't work for Adobe Courier, use english style quotes instead
.fschar Courier-Bold \(Go \(lq
.fschar Courier-Bold \(Gc \(rq
.fschar Courier-Bold \(go \(oq
.fschar Courier-Bold \(gc \(cq
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.sp 3c
.ps 18
.vs 20
.ft 1
\(lqenglish\(rq
\(Godeutsch\(Gc
\(Fo\|fran\(,cais\|\(Fc
.br
.ft 2
\(lqenglish\(rq
\(Godeutsch\(Gc
\(Fofran\(,cais\(Fc
.br
.ft 1
\(oqenglish\(cq
\(godeutsch\(gc
\(fo\|fran\(,cais\|\(fc
.br
.ft 2
\(oqenglish\(cq
\(godeutsch\(gc
\(fofran\(,cais\(fc

quotes.png
Description: PNG image