On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 08:17:42AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
Heh, I see in this case it's been requested
at least 3 times before.
Most of the discussion is on
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1485 and is quite
interesting - issues about when to convert to em-dash vs en-dash. The
discussion seems to boil down to: everyone agrees that -- to em-dash
is intuitive, but how do you then implement a syntax for en-dash for
the few people who want it?
Luckily we've already got one: –
Damn typography snobs... ;)
That may look like a joke, but I agree -- endashes are rare enough in
comparison that it seems that if one of the two is going to be somewhat
unintuitive, it should be the endash, and thus the HTML entity strikes
me as a good answer to the problem.
Would requiring spaces on either side of the double dash before
converting it into an emdash improve the parsing behavior any? It
should at least solve the image name problem, since spaces in image
names should (in my honest opinion) be considered a no-no in any case.
Then again, I'm not in charge, of course.
I suppose I should go look at the bugzilla discussion now. I seem to
recall, last time I looked at it, that the endash people were advocating
for -- being translated to endashes and --- to emdashes, which seems
counterintuitive for both, since endashes are supposed to be shorter
than - and emdashes have been represented as -- for so long and in so
many contexts that using three dashes will just confuse the heck out of
many. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
I'll shut up now and go read bugzilla discussion. Sorry about the
ramble, just thinking "out loud".
--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [
http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to
build programs out of the wrong concepts." - Paul Graham