Re: groff_man_style(7): wfix needed

[Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)]

Hi Branden,

On 1/25/22 03:12, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi, Alex!
> 
> At 2022-01-24T23:07:52+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>> Hi, Branden!
>>
>> My brain returned EAMBIGUOUS for the following paragraph:
>>
>> [
>>        \(aq   Basic Latin apostrophe.  Some output  devices  re‐
>>               place “'” with a right single quotation mark.
>>
>>        \(oq
>>        \(cq   Opening  and  closing single quotation marks.  Use
>>               these for paired directional single quotes,  ‘like
>>               this’.
>> ]
>>
>>
>> What did you mean by 'a right single quotation mark'?
>> s/right/correct/?  Or maybe  s/right/closing/?
> 
> I believe Ingo Schwarze contributed the above language; he's quoting the
> Unicode Character Standard.

CC += Ingo

> 
> $ unicode 2019
> U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
> UTF-8: e2 80 99 UTF-16BE: 2019 Decimal: ’ Octal: \020031
> ’
> Category: Pf (Punctuation, Final quote); East Asian width: A (ambiguous)
> Unicode block: 2000..206F; General Punctuation
> Bidi: ON (Other Neutrals)
> 
> Calling this glyph "closing" can be misleading depending on the
> language.  For instance, Swedish apparently uses U+201D "RIGHT DOUBLE
> QUOTATION MARK" for both opening _and_ closing quotation marks.
> 
> Things get complicated with bidirectional scripts and mirrored glyphs.
> I feel like the safest thing to do here is to simply use Unicode's
> names.  What do you think?

Hmmm, I'm not sure.

I quoted the immediately-following paragraph to note the inconsistency,
where the same glyph is first called 'right single quotation mark', and
the next text line calls it 'closing single quotation mark[s]'.

I understand that since the escape sequences are \(oq and \(cq, it makes
sense to use 'opening' and 'closing' there.  And yes, I'd say that for
"'" it makes sense to use Unicode nomenclature.  It's having the two
paragraphs together that makes this inconsistency more inconsistent.

I think I would use Unicode naming also in \(oq and \(cq, and add in
parentheses the mnemonic one:


[
       \(aq   Basic Latin apostrophe.  Some output  devices  re‐
              place “'” with a right single quotation mark.

       \(oq
       \(cq   Left (opening) and right (closing) single quotation
              marks.  Use these for paired directional single
              quotes, ‘like this’.
]


Regards,

Alex


-- 
Alejandro Colomar
Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/