> Martin - From your email, it sounds like you come down on the side of
> using the spell-check "Set Language" option to set the smart quote
> characters. I have already stated my disagreement, but I have no
> problem if the concensus is against me.
> If the Germans, et al, who have multiple quoting styles for their
> locale have a problem with using the "Set Language" option, now would
> be a good time to speak up.
The Germans do not have multiple quoting styles in *day to day use*, and
I doubt that anybody else does. However, and this to me is far more
important, the Germans should not have to customize the quotes set up to
avoid getting English style quotes, that should just work out of the
box. The common case should always just work without user intervention,
and the common case here is that if I am typing a German text, I am
expecting the quotes to follow German typographic conventions and if I
type English text I expect the quote to follow English typographic
conventions.
I am aware that I am repeating myself, but this goes to the heart of the
AbiWord design philosophy -- the feature set and UI has always been
driven by the belief that things that users do all the time should just
work (i.e., not require UI if at all possible) and that uncommon things
should be possible, but do not have to be easy; this 'multiple quoting
styles' scenario falls into the latter category (any arbitrary
characters can be always be inserted manually), and there is no
justification for making the common case harder in order to cater for
the uncommon case. This paradigm has served us well, and is the reason
why AbiWord is not as bloated as some other word processors out there.
Tomas
Received on Mon Mar 17 10:15:31 2008
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Mon Mar 17 2008 - 10:15:31 CET