Am 1999-03-30 um 7:17 h hat Edwin F. Hart geschrieben:
> I will also switch to the opening lower German quotation mark.  : )

But be sure to bend it the correct way :-)

In German, all quote characters are bended away from the text quoted, so
that the lower (left) quote character is U+201E (with its 9-like shape),
and the upper (right) one is U+201C (with its 6-like shape). This holds
even for guillemets, e. g.
  Il dit: « Excusez-moi, parlez vous français ? »
  Er sagt: »Entschuldigung, sprechen Sie Deutsch?«
Even
  Er sagt: »Excusez-moi, parlez vous français ?«
as, strictly speaking, the quotes are punctuation of the surrounding
text, hence they should be typeset accordingly, whilst the blank left of
the questions mark is part of the quoted (french) punctuation, hence
should be reproduced faithfully (though it will look horrible to those
suited to German typography :-)

Hence, the remark in TUS 2.0, p. 7-155
· this is the preferred character for opening quotation mark
is plainly wrong. In the next Unicode Standard, it should be removed,
or -- even better -- mended to read
· this is the preferred character for opening quotation mark,
  in English and several other languages; it is the preferred
  character for closing quotation, in German
Likewise, the remark for U+201D (p. 7-156) should be mended to read:
· this is the preferred character for closinging quotation mark
  in English, and several other languages
and the remark for 201E could read
· this is the preferred character for opening quotation mark, in German
I do not know which other European languages the current note on 201E
is referring to; of course, the contrasting usage (if there is any) should
be mentioned in the forthcoming note.

Btw, MS-Word [German] does this right for input in German; however, it is
utterly difficult to write English text with quotes, in the German version
of Word.

Best wishes,
   Otto Stolz