Re: [Groff] Rendering \(oq in ASCII and ISO 8859-1

[Branden Robinson]

[apologies for the To/CC, but I'm not subscribed to the list and can't be
sure if my messages will be moderator-approved]

On Sat, Dec 22, 2001 at 08:53:33PM +0000, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > Not when using my DEC VT520, and I think any DEC terminal back to the
> > VT220.
> 
> I'll try and make that clearer.  It is normal, traditional, and
> typical, for troff under Unix to use the two 7-bit ASCII single quotes
> for left and right.
> 
>     0047   39    0x27    '
>     0140   96    0x60    `
> 
> It gives two distinct characters.

No one is saying these aren't distinct characters.  But what they are
not is both single quote characters.  ASCII 0x60 is an acute accent, not
a single quote.  Just because it can be semantically overloaded with a
single left quotation mark doesn't mean that's what it is.  For example,

1 C4N 53M4N71C4LLY 0V3RL04D L075 0F CH4R4C73R5 4ND 571LL 7R4N5M17 MY
M34N1N6, 8U7 7H47 D035N'7 M34N WH47 1 4M D01N6 15 PL3454N7 0R C0RR3C7.

> I agree that on some annoying terminals, and I think DEC's are included
> here from memory of a VMS system used for playing rogue :-) the `left'
> quote appears as a vertical single quote.  That's why Lear Siegler's
> ADM 11s were so much better ;-)

Sorry, having had scarring experiences with ADM terminals at Purdue
University, I worship at the altar of DEC.  :)

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |    Optimists believe we live in the
Debian GNU/Linux                   |    best of all possible worlds.
address@hidden                 |    Pessimists are afraid the optimists
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |    are right.

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