Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Who on Earth is the LibO installation target?

Hi Jean-Francois,

On 10 February 2014 19:42, Jean-Francois Nifenecker
<jean-francois.nifenecker@laposte.net> wrote:
> Well, if I understand correctly, it seems better to not set a
> typographic must-have for a very common character because of a few
> border-line cases?

I think your look at this problem is very much informed by your being
French and by your own professional perspective.
My mother tongue, German, for instance uses far fewer apostrophes,
especially in formal writing, as apostrophes most often appear in
informal contractions (geht's = does it go, hast's = have you got it,
...). I would suppose that my apostrophe-to-single-quote ratio in all
my German writing is around three to one. In academic writing
especially, with its rigid quoting requirements the ratio in German
(and maybe even in English) will actually tip in favour of the single
quotes.
Similarly, Angloamerican publishers of fiction very often use single
quotes in place of all regular quotes. (Of course, they do have the
advantage that their closing typographic quote mark looks the same as
an apostrophe, I think.)


> The same could be told about the French double-quotes
> which *are* correctly setup and rendered but can bring some "problems"
> when one wants actual " (angle second) marks.

Well, sorry to tell you, but straight quotes aren't actually good for
much. They are at least not the correct character to use for angle
seconds [1] or inches.


Astron.


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minute_of_arc#Symbols_and_abbreviations

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