Hello, "Mark E. Shoulson" <m...@kli.org> writes:
> Maybe, if it's all on one line. But if the quote is several lines > long, can you sensibly count the levels? Well, yes. > I guess it doesn't actually matter, but it starts to get weird if you > find yourself looking arbitrarily far back, and then you start > building in exceptions for crossing paragraph boundaries... True. I had the exporter in mind, where you always start at the beginning of the paragraph. It would be more difficult with search starting in the middle of the paragraph. > And then there's the fact that multi-paragraph quotes usually have an > open-quote for each paragraph but only one close-quote at the end... Some french typographers suggest to use a close-quote at the beginning of the paragraph to avoid that confusion, or to simply drop them (since they are a pain to maintain anyway). I don't know about other languages but, if that's the same, is it a good idea to bother implementing it? > Actually keeping count of what level you're at, accurately, is > a classic example of a non-regular language; you need a push-down > automaton to keep count, and regular expressions don't cut it. This is limited to 2 levels. > I'm rambling. In sum, I'm going to start off /not/ trying to solve > that problem, and assume the writer is going to use alternating " and > as typography requires and not try to second-guess what level we're > at. You are right, the problem will be easier to solve with both " and '. Though, "as typography requires" is not true. In France, the /Imprimerie Nationale/ suggests to use guillemots at both levels. Remember that typography is localized, which is the main difficulty of the implementation. Regards, -- Nicolas Goaziou
