Re: New translation posted

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sat Feb 03 2007 - 10:52:13 CST

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    From: "Hans Aberg" <haberg@math.su.se>
    > On 3 Feb 2007, at 09:06, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
    >
    >>> Also I would suggest replacing every vertical apostrophe-quote by
    >>> an oblique apostrophe (high comma, which should show as a wedge
    >>> glyph in sans-serif fonts, or as a 9-shaped glyph in serif fonts),
    >>
    >> I think you mean that U+0027 APOSTROPHE ("Ascii apostrophe") should
    >> be replaced by U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK ("typographer's
    >> apostrophe"). Yes, it should. U+0027 is not a correct apostrophe in
    >> any human language that I heard of, t
    >
    > Aren't you lead stray by the poor renderings usually given to U+0027?
    > As it is semantically an apostrophe, it should be used when an
    > apostrophe is called for; not U+2019, as it should be used in
    > quotations. But U+0027 should be given, better, apostrophe looking
    > renderings. If this task, getting better fonts, seems hopeless,
    > perhaps a new apostrophe character should be added.

    No. U+0027 needs to remain neutral, i.e. vertical, due to its weak definition as it is used both for opening and closing quotes, or as apostrophes, or as substitutes for various characters or even sometimes to replace various diacritics.

    The rendering is not wrong in the Unicode page, and not even in the fonts used to render it. What is criticized here is the use of the weak vertical apostrophe-quote from ASCII ; all typographers for French at least recommand using the oriented 9-shaped apostrophe or a high-comma. But definitely not the vertical quote from ASCII which is just a default substitute to be used in reduced character sets (we are on the Unicode website, it should use the Unicode repertoire, without being constrainted into the reduced ASCII set, because no default substitute is necessary here).

    Note that the apostrophe in French is NOT a punctuation; it is orthographic, and it has its own linguistic semantic. It's more like a modifier letter.



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