Re: [Groff] Using \(aq in plain English words--bad idea?

[Dave Kemper]

On 4/29/17, G. Branden Robinson <address@hidden> wrote:
> At 2017-04-29T15:40:06+0200, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
>> So yes, documentation kind of recommends "Don\(aqt listen".
>
> I don't interpret it that way.

Nor I.

The quoted mandoc_char passage cites things like "source code samples"
as places where one should use \(aq, but seems to explicitly recommend
against constructions like "don\(aqt" by saying, "In prose, this
automatic substitution [of U+2019 for '] is often desirable".

The groff_char passage says only *how* to get a U+0027 in output
without addressing in what cases one might want to do this, so it
gives no recommendation at all.

So I fail to see where the quoted documentation "kind of recommends
'Don\(aqt listen'".



On 4/29/17, Anthony J. Bentley <address@hidden> wrote:
> Unicode made the decision a long time ago to consider U+2019 as both
> right single quotation mark and apostrophe; see the Apostrophes section
> of Unicode 9.0, chapter 6.

Yes, and that remains a bad decision, because it conflates two
distinct marks of punctuation that have vastly different semantic
meanings, disallows automated checking for balanced quotation marks,
and causes other problems eloquently described in:

https://tedclancy.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/which-unicode-character-should-represent-the-english-apostrophe-and-why-the-unicode-committee-is-very-wrong/