[l2h] double quoation in latex2html

[Ross Moore]

On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Brendan Halpin wrote:

> Ross Moore <ross at ics.mq.edu.au> writes:
>
> > On Mon, 17 Mar 2003, Taechul Lee wrote:
> > > When I put a double quotation mark in emacs, it automatically translate
> > > into `` ''. After compile, it looks good. However, when I translate it
> > > html with latex2html, it just put `` '' mark.
> > >
> > > Is it natural or I try to find another method to put a quotation mark ?
> >
> > It is natural, since the "curly quotes" used by Windows do not reside at
> > a standard location within the ISO-Latin font-encodings.
> > Instead Windows-encodings place these characters within the "forbidden"
> > regions of encoding vectors. As a result, they would show as weird
> > alternative characters on non-Windows platforms (e.g. Macintosh).
> >
> > Due to this non-standard treatment, LaTeX2HTML is programmed to not use
> > such characters, though it is possible to overide this.
>
> Why not use entities like &lsquo; and friends? Then the browser can
> take care of worrying about what platform it is on, and what fonts
> it has.

Well, that would indeed be the ideal solution.
But 3-4 years ago, when all of this was programmed, it was not that case
that such entities were recognised in most browsers --- so this was not
adopted at that time, even though this solution was recognised.

Indeed, there is a variable $USE_CURLY_QUOTES that is designed to
implement the translations
  `` -->  ldquo character
  '' -->  rdquo character
*provided* the charset has been set to one which includes such characters.

In particular, using 'unicode' then the correct parameter entities should
be used.


If it is now true that entities &lsquo;  &ldquo;  etc.  are well
recognised by browsers -- in *practice* not just in theory -- then it
would be appropriate to adjust the defaults to use them.



Hope this helps,

	Ross Moore


>
> Brendan
> --
> Brendan Halpin,  Department of Sociology,   University of Limerick,  Ireland
> Tel: w +353-61-213147 f +353-61-202569 h +353-61-390476;  Room F2-025 x 3147
> <mailto:brendan.halpin at ul.ie>        <http://wivenhoe.staff8.ul.ie/~brendan>
>