GNU bug report logs - #20385
Support curved quotes in doc strings

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Message #92 received at 20385 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Drew Adams <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>, Nicolas Petton <nicolas <at> petton.fr>
Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>, 20385 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,
 Dmitry Gutov <dgutov <at> yandex.ru>
Subject: RE: bug#20385: [PROPOSED PATCH] Support quoting 'like this' in doc
 strings
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2015 19:19:15 -0700 (PDT)

> > If Emacs at some point decides to switch to another code-quoting
> > mechanism, that's one thing.  But what it definitely should NOT
> > do, IMO, is to lose code quoting
> 
> Yes, that makes sense.  The latest iteration of the proposal does
> that, by suggesting that doc strings use curved single quotes
> ‘like-this’ to quote code.  This mechanism is already used in the
> Emacs 24.5 info files, and it works well there.

Huh?  You say that you agree, that what I say makes sense.  And then
you say that ‘...’ is a solution!  That's precisely what I'm saying
does *not* work.  If you paste that into any context where curly
quoting is used for ordinary text (which - nowadays, as you would say -
means most ordinary-text contexts) then you lose the special quoting
of code.

Whether curly quotes are single or double is irrelevant: both are
used in ordinary situations to quote ordinary text.  Neither is
something special for quoting code.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark.  Note, in particular
(in case this was something you were confused about), that British
and American usages tends to be reversed wrt which curly quotes,
single or double, are used at the first level:

 In American English, double quotes are used normally (the "primary"
 style). If quote marks are used inside another pair of quote marks,
 then single quotes are used as the "secondary" style. For example:
 "Didn't she say 'I like red best' when asked her favorite wine?"
 he wondered to himself.

 If another set of quotes is nested, double quotes are used again,
 and they continue to alternate as necessary (though this is rarely
 done). British English tends to have the opposite convention –
 single quotes are primary, and double quotes are secondary.
 Different varieties of English have different rules regarding
 whether neighboring punctuation should be written inside or
 outside the quotation marks.

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