typography of the apostrophe

[John Gruber]

Michel Fortin <michel.fortin at michelf.com> wrote on 10/19/05 at 9:34 AM:


> I'm not sure what you mean when you say it adapts badly to French  

> typography. In French we quote text « this way » and sometime we use  

> English-style double quotes. Are you suggesting SmartyPants should  

> replace "double quotes" with « angle quotes » inside French text?


I have gotten a significant number of requests for this, actually.



> The French version of Microsoft Word does this and I always hated it.

> It's a pain when you want mix languages. Not only that, but English-

> style double quotes are often used for inner quotations in French,

> pretty hard to do with Word.


Any such support in SmartyPants would be an option, not a default.



> If SmartyPants was to do something good for the French language, I  

> think it could replace <<this approximation of french quotes>> with  

> «something better».


That's another popular request from writers using languages that use
guillemets.

 

> I made a PHP script for the French part of my website that deals with  

> that. By default it doesn't add any space, it only *replaces* normal  

> spaces with unbreakable spaces where appropriate. This way it  

> shouldn't cause any harm to English or (hopefully) other languages.  

> You can also set it to impose a space or no space before and after  

> such marks.

> 

> The script can also replace spaces at other predefined places, let's  

> say "p. 12", "10 Kb", etc. Obviously, this list can be useful in any  

> language, and should be localizable.

> 

> I haven't published my script yet, but since we are at it, I'm open  

> to the idea it could merged with SmartyPants, if there is some  

> interest and John thinks it is appropriate. Otherwise I'll just  

> release it as a separate project, as planned initially.


Could be a good addition. More or less fits as a SmartyPants feature
if you think of SmartyPants as a system for controlling all things
related to web typography and layout, not just punctuation.

-J.G.