[sword-devel] Re: [osis-editors] The death of OSIS?

[Will Thimbleby]

Agreed. I think the concept of users wanting to change quotes is mostly 
academic. Has anyone actually wanted to do this? Really?

I believe (from a position of little knowledge) that the language rules 
for quotes in complex cases go beyond what style sheets can do.

There was a claim quotes are additions to the text. I disagree. If you 
go down this road, why would you stop at quotes? Surely commas are 
additions as well and what about other punctuation? I believe that 
quotes are part of the text as and where the translators placed them.

What this idea does is shift the responsibility of handle quotes for a 
language from the translator (probably a group of highly educated 
linguists -- specialised in each text and language) to the programmer. 
As a programmer I can tell you who I'd rather have deal quotes. Are you 
telling me that I (one illiterate programmer) would need to replace the 
specialised knowledge of teams of translators for each text and the 
hundreds of languages?


I think that almost nobody actually needs or wants this functionality, 
and that it puts the burden of generating the quotes onto the wrong 
shoulders. I also think that quotes are a part of the text, and I 
disagree with the idea that people will like you changing them.

--Will

On 11 Aug 2004, at 6:24 pm, Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
> 	Preserving original document quote content is also a concern, but my 
> overwhelming desire for this is to relieve the burden for myself to 
> actually KNOW OR CARE how all languages of the world render their 
> quotes.
>
> 		-Troy.