Re: [Groff] It is time to modernise "groff"

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2017-09-04T22:35:40+0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> 
> > Stuff like `this' should be burned with fire and extreme prejudice.
> > It's been ugly for over 20 years and is indefensible.
> 
> I disagree.  While it shouldn't be displayed after processing with
> groff, it is very convenient for input even today.

Ah, yes, I let my passion obscure my context.  Yes, I think TeX's
convention of quoting ``like this'' is eye-wateringly ugly, but I
wouldn't change it.  Because it's _input_.

What I don't want is computer _output_ that looks like that, for
instance in diagnostic messages like the one from Bjarni that I quoted
when I spouted off.

> On my US keyboard it is still non-trivial to enter ‘ and ’.

Yes, I admit I had to look in /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose
for how to do it, and I've gone to the trouble of setting up a Compose
key, which many en_US people haven't done.

> Additionally, some common fonts like DejaVu have glyph representation
> forms for those two glyphs that look almost identical, which is an
> invitation for mistyping.

>wince<

Yes, whatever we do, let's NOT learn from
https://websec.github.io/unicode-security-guide/visual-spoofing/ .

You think they'd welcome patches? ;-)

> Note that using only straight quotes like '...' is not a good
> replacement for input IMHO; I much prefer paired quotes.

For input, absolutely.  Non-identical paired delimiteres are one reason
why $() is better than `` for process substitution in the shell.

> Note also that I don't object to change `...' to '...' in code
> comments or the like.  Whatever you do, however, it should be
> consistent.

Fully agreed.

-- 
Regards,
Branden

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