[l2h] Problems with closing quotation marks

[Ronald Hartwig]

Ross Moore wrote:

> > ,,open and close`` (which is wrong in german)  ...
> 
> Is it wrong?
> LaTeX2HTML follows what is described on:
> 
>    http://www.maths.mq.edu.au/texdev/tests/harn/node1.html

The problem is the direction of the quotation marks. The opening marks
are simply two close set commata <<,,>>, the closing ones are those
marks turned by 180 degree <<´´>>. On
http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/general_punctuation.html they are
both given:

Open is: 
<<„>> (Hex: 201E) (HTML:&bdquo;) 
(Name: "DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK   (present in WGL4 and ANSI")

Close would be:  
<<none>> (Hex: 201F) (HTML: none) 
(Name: "DOUBLE HIGH-REVERSED-9 QUOTATION MARK") 

as the closing one is not present in the normal charsets, you may use 
<<”>> (Hex: 201D) (HTML: &rdquo;) 
(Name: "RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK   (present in WGL4 and ANSI)") 
instead, as it looks very similar.

but do NOT use
<<“>> (Hex: 201C) (HTML: &ldquo;) 
(Name: "LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK   (present in WGL4 and ANSI)")

(BTW: This is similiar to the single quotation marks &sbquo; (open) and
&rsquo; (close))

The marks used by latex2html <<``>> are wrong (and actually look bad),
as the are mirrored vertically to the opposite side. I had complaints
about this already. 

> This page was first constructed in 1997, by a German national,
> and no-one has complained before now.

Normally its not really a big deal but as I am working on a project in
the academic area, some participants are a bit picky about such details
:)

> I don't have the 1st-hand knowledge, but if it is indeed wrong
> then I'll change it. However it will need confirmation
> from a variety of sources before I'd make such a change.

You may confirm it from the german reference language lexicon, the
"Duden". In the current edition # 21 (1996, reformed version) it is
cleary stated on page 65-66 ("Richtlinien für den Schriftsatz;
Anführungszeichen") how quotation marks have to look like. 

> >  ...  or even worse ,,open and
> > close _` (flipped question mark) when it should be ,,open and close?__
> 
> This is because ?" is normally a ligature in TeX.
> If LaTeX2HTML searches for this pattern before searching for
> German ligatures, then this could explain the mis-translation.
> 
> Test this, or work-around it, by using   ?{}"'

OK

> > I set the $default_language = 'german';        but is showed no effect...
> 
> \usepackage{german}  or  \usepackage[german]{babel}
> are the usual ways to get the special german translation extensions.

OK, of course I did that. I just thought this one would help too.

> Hope this helps,

Yes, a lot.

Thanks
Ronald



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Institut für Multimediale und Interaktive Systeme
Dipl.-Inform. Ronald Hartwig
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