To some, the name might be the WRONG SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

re: To some, the name might be the WRONG SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

Gerard 't Hooft — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:08:33 GMT

Indeed I take ages to respond. Yes, I do complain, but hardly ever get any response, certainly not from the direction of Microsoft.

I do not understand why smart quotes are so stupid. It is not only in Dutch that they go wrong. I participated at a meeting called Physics '99 and guess how '99 was spelled on their poster? If you have an eye for it, you see this mistake being made everywhere. I am afraid the smart quote feature could only work if the program could understand in an intelligent way what is being written. Fact is that the quotation sign ' may stand for something omitted, like isn't, or '99 instead of 1999. If smart quote cannot figure that out, it should be removed from the program.

Fact is: people won't correct subtle modifications like the ones produced by smart quote which often go unnoticed.

Smart quote is so stupid that it does more harm than good. It should be switched off not only in Dutch texts but everywhere.

O, by the way, in Dutch, the double beginning quotation symbol used to be " written as 99 in a lowered position. With English keyboards, this rule has disappeared without a whisper. Why did no-one protest? Could a future really smart quote reinstall this beautiful feature of the Dutch language?

re: To some, the name might be the WRONG SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

Gé van Gasteren — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:12:13 GMT

I’m sure he has, but I have no references except his own web site:

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/ap.html

I’ve sent him an email some time ago (and again today, just in case it ended up in his spam folder) but he always takes ages to respond.

re: To some, the name might be the WRONG SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

Michael S. Kaplan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:55:19 GMT

While I am sure having more juice wouldn't hurt, I don't know if I am the best negotiator for this particular issue. Has he complained about this anywhere publicly that can be referenced?

re: To some, the name might be the WRONG SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

Gé van Gasteren — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:44:00 GMT

I forgot to mention: There’s a Nobel-Prize winner in Holland with last name ’t Hooft, who is rather piqued every time someone spells his name with an opening quote. Maybe he could add to the clout for making Microsoft ship Dutch packages with smart quotes turned off by default?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_'t_Hooft

re: To some, the name might be the WRONG SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

Gé van Gasteren — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:38:29 GMT

Thanks for that work-around!

I’m typing this on my home-made "Dutch-International" keyboard and am slowly getting used to typing a space after the quote, instead of relying on the default-character behaviour (when the word doesn’t start with a vowel).

Actually, the first might be the way most Dutch type their quotes―I just don’t know.

(I just discover that there doesn’t seem to be a way to type an EM-dash in my keyboard, or on the US one―I’m pasting this one in from WordPad, where I typed it with 2015 Alt-X... Please correct me if there is a keystroke for it hidden somewhere.)

In answer to the first comment, I want to say that you're telling only half the story. I prefer the Mac myself, but Microsoft doesn't do things worse, just differently: Apple provides tools to make the user's job easier, Microsoft tries to take over the job from the user.

I prefer the first approach, but the latter does work for the majority of users.

And regarding quotes: When you are typing in MS Word and switch to the German keyboard layout, Word switches the text language to German too, and the smart quote behaviour switches to give you the proper German quotes „ and ”. Of course, the automatic language-detection routine has its quirks and may mess up things, but most users type in one language only and have no problems.

re: To some, the name might be the WRONG SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

Adam T — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:50:07 GMT

I must admit, this issue was one why I instantly appreciated Mac OS X after switching to it after years of using Windows (the appearance of Vista was the event that immediately prompted me to that step).

In all the major Mac OS X keyboard layouts, the correct opening and closing quotation marks are accessible through Alt-key combinations, and they’re done in a sensible way. For example, in the U.S. English layout, Alt+[ gives “ and Shift+Alt+[ gives ”, while Alt+] gives ‘ and Shift+Alt+] gives ’. But when I switch to the Polish keyboard, Alt+[ will give me „ and Alt+] will give me ‚ — which are the proper opening quotation marks for Polish. Alt+\ give me « and Shift+Alt+\ give me », so I can even use the guillemets instead of the apostrophic quotation marks (a practice very common in Germany, sometimes in Poland and other European countries).

In addition, Alt+- gives me – and Shift+Alt+- gives me —, so I’m able to easily typographically correct dashes everywhere, not just in Word (e.g. in web browser text fields such as this one).

And there are tons of other sensible mappings. Alt+< is ≤, Alt+> is ≥, Alt+= is ≠ and Shift+Alt+= is ±.

The U.S. Extended layout gives me dead-key access to practically all combining diacritical marks that exist in Unicode. And overall, it seems like the developers who created the keyboard layouts thought very sensibly about an exhaustive use of Alt-combinations — and this is done in a no-specialty way so it is a low-hanging fruit for every user. No extra software installation required.

I wish Microsoft had done the same.

Regards,

Adam