localised typography for Textile

Skubidu · 2006-09-19 21:36:51

I tried to assemble a list of the most commom German typographical issues. The list opposes a possible input with its typographical transformation. You can find the list here.

Please feel free to comment :)

zem · 2006-09-19 23:12:30

One question regarding the two quote styles („…“ / ‚…‘ vs »…« / ›…‹ ): would it be common to use a mix of the two styles in a document? Or is it pretty much one or the other?

There are three ways we could approach multiple quote styles in Textile:

One is to have some kind of setting or mode to select the style you want. “dumb” ‘quotes’ produce either „dumb“ / ‚quotes‘ or »dumb« / ›quotes‹ depending on that setting.

Two is, we use additional Textile markup characters to stand in for the second quote styles. Perhaps >dumb< >>quotes<< or similar.

And three is, we support only one style of quote per language (either „…“ / ‚…‘ or »…« / ›…‹, whichever is more common), and allow the user to manually enter the other using the character map or similar. This is the current situation.

Last edited by zem (2006-09-19 23:13:31)

marios · 2006-09-20 00:20:33

I think the third option would make more sense. As for the modern greek, I believe that the second quoting style (from my post above) is
pretty dangerous.(Could be easily confused with greater then and lesser then sign, which creates other problems then.)
For modern Greek, I would assume, the first mentioned one to be standard.

regards, marios

Skubidu · 2006-09-20 06:47:25

I think for German the first option would be the best one. Which quotes are more common depends on what you are writing. In general „these“ quotes are the standard ones. But if you are writing more literary texts »the others« are the one you use.

The second option would be a nice addition, but it’s not a common syntax (which might be a problem).

The third one is an improvement, but it’s not that satisfactory:)

Skubidu · 2006-09-20 06:50:59

One question regarding the two quote styles („…“ / ‚…‘ vs »…« / ›…‹ ): would it be common to use a mix of the two styles in a document? Or is it pretty much one or the other?

Normally it should be just one of the two styles. But it’s not “forbidden” to mix both.

One question I have in mind: How should quotes be handled if an author switches languages in his text?

wet · 2006-09-20 08:54:53

Additionally, if this was a per-site setting, what about subsequent changes? Textile is parsed at article save time, so later changes in a site wide setting won’t affect older articles without a re-save.

Maybe this could be a per-article setting with a global default preference along the lines of “enable comments”. Then a tool to reparse selected articles would come handy. The UI would fit nicely into the bottom drop down at the article list page.

I’ll go and fire the feature creep alarm ;-)

zem · 2006-09-20 22:48:17

Long term, we probably need to do two things:

1. Partially separate the language and locale settings, so you can select between (for example) different German locales for dates and punctuation when using the German translation.

2. Provide some way of overriding the locale in Textile, perhaps related to the %[de-de]language override% syntax.

jakob · 2006-09-22 22:38:25

Great table, Nils. It corroborates with Forssman+De Jongs Detailtypografie. You’re right, the »…« quotes are used mostly in literary texts or fancy book publishing.

I like the idea of using >> and << but will it not become a problem for French quotes which use these quotes exactly the other way around, i.e. «Mon Dieu!»? That will surely lead to parsing confusion with HTML-tags.

Like Nils I think the first option (pref – normal or fancy quotes) in combination with the third (enter manually) would be best.

I also think the language override option is important or it will torpedo all those doing multi-language sites. Ideally I think it should be a per-article override option. A common situation for multi-language sites is that the txp interface language is in the home language of the operator but that articles are also published as a whole in other languages (e.g. in a different section). It would be a major pain for authors to have to enclose every article text/paragraph/textile-unit in <notextile>%[en-gb] … %</notextile>. A lang attribute for txp articles would be good web practice in general.

Skubidu · 2006-09-23 09:46:04

A common situation for multi-language sites is that the txp interface language is in the home language of the operator but that articles are also published as a whole in other languages (e.g. in a different section). It would be a major pain for authors to have to enclose every article text/paragraph/textile-unit in %[en-gb] … %. A lang attribute for txp articles would be good web practice in general.

Maybe it would be possible to create a tag that allows you to switch the language settings, e. g. <txp:locales lang="de-de">...</txp:locales>.

tore · 2006-11-25 15:38:00

Swedish

For proper typography in Swedish little has to be modified; only that opening quotes are written like closing quotes: ”like this” and like ’that’.

P.S. Btw, couldn’t the hyphen be converted to – always after whitespace in order to serve as a better minus sign in numeric values?

Last edited by tore (2006-11-25 16:22:08)

Mary · 2006-11-26 13:31:40

En-dash isn’t for math.

tore · 2006-11-26 13:51:41

OK, true, just that the visual similarity may justify an easier method than using

− or & #8722;

in negative-number-intense texts …

Jeremie · 2006-12-28 04:34:29

I have missed this thread. So, first, a small file including a diff .patch for French typo rules. It’s only the basics, a couple may be missing.

Double punctuation

For every double punctuation sign (: ; ? !) French use a space before the sign, and to avoid being pushed on the next line this space need to be non-breaking (in theory it’s the fine non-breaking space, but almost all browser don’t understand it). These may be (it’s the simplest thing, and easy to correct in a workflow scheme) input like this:

sp:sp

(where “sp” is a space)

and would produce:

nbsp:sp

This is taken care of in the file linked above, using a regexp that is svn update friendly.

Quotes

The basic quotes are «». The double opening quote should be followed by a nonbreaking space, and the double closing quote should have one before it. A rare second level of quotes is used, it’s the same as the English ones, plus the nbsp. The quotes are input using the dumb straight computer quote <notextile>”</notextile>, and using the dumb <notextile>’</notextile> for the second level quote is fine. This is all doable right now with the define scheme.

en dash

en dashes are used in French like the em dashes in US english, like a “soft” parenthesis. It need nbsp around it (before and after). It’s input like this:

sp-sp

meaning, space, dumb <notextile>-</notextile>, space.

It’s doable right now in define but the standard space around it are hard coded later, so a little hack is needed here.

Upper case diacritic

In French, we have several letters that use accent (eaoui). Because of the typewriter and the dumb computers, they aren’t easily available for upper case letters on a modern keyboard, but they can be misleading (some word don’t mean the same thing with or without the accent). Same goes with ligature (æ and œ, and the same in upper case). However, Textile has no way of guessing. So the only solution is to have a “insert special characters” javascript tool, like Wikipedia does.

That’s all I can think of right now.

Last edited by Jeremie (2006-12-28 04:52:17)

masa · 2008-02-28 11:17:12

I recently noticed the localisation files now contain a block:

txt_quote_double_close => ”
txt_quote_double_open => “
txt_quote_single_close => ’
txt_quote_single_open => ‘

That seems to address this problem for the quotes. It’s been around since txp 4.0.4, but I hadn’t seen it mentioned anywhere – nice! :-)

wet · 2008-02-28 11:58:52

masa wrote:

That seems to address this problem for the quotes. It’s been around since txp 4.0.4, but I hadn’t seen it mentioned anywhere – nice! :-)

There’s a reason why it hasn’t been mentioned anywhere: It does not cover some very common edge cases, like "I'm running out of 9" nails" or 's the season! and similar quote constellations.

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#16 2006-09-19 21:36:51

Re: localised typography for Textile

#17 2006-09-19 23:12:30

Re: localised typography for Textile

#18 2006-09-20 00:20:33

Re: localised typography for Textile

#19 2006-09-20 06:47:25

Re: localised typography for Textile

#20 2006-09-20 06:50:59

Re: localised typography for Textile

#21 2006-09-20 08:54:53

Re: localised typography for Textile

#22 2006-09-20 22:48:17

Re: localised typography for Textile

#23 2006-09-22 22:38:25

Re: localised typography for Textile

#24 2006-09-23 09:46:04

Re: localised typography for Textile

#25 2006-11-25 15:38:00

Re: localised typography for Textile

#26 2006-11-26 13:31:40

Re: localised typography for Textile

#27 2006-11-26 13:51:41

Re: localised typography for Textile

#28 2006-12-28 04:34:29

Re: localised typography for Textile

Double punctuation

Quotes

en dash

Upper case diacritic

#29 2008-02-28 11:17:12

Re: localised typography for Textile

#30 2008-02-28 11:58:52

Re: localised typography for Textile

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