Although I tend to agree with Don, I'm not sure everyone I know exactly what
we're talking about here. Could someone volunteer an example?
/glen
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Cragun [mailto:yyyyyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: July 01, 1999 1:26 PM
To: yyyyyyyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: A note from our Editors (was Bug in XBD)
...
>
>3. All characters in XSH and XBD were changed to no quotes. The use of
>quotes was more confusing than not having them, since sometimes the quotes
>are meaningful. However, this has not yet been done in XCU. During the
>final stages of the last version, we were asked to add quotes to all
>characters in XCU. However, this could never have been done thoroughly on
>an automatic basis (and as it turns out was very badly done) because the
>files were in such a messy state. We have therefore got halfway through
>sorting out this problem during my major recode of XCU. Reversing this
>decision is possible, but we would advise against it.
I disagree with the decision to remove quotes. (But I know I have lost
this battle before.) In many cases, there is no confusion and either
form is readable. In other cases, not having quotes makes the meaning
ambiguous (Does an ellipsis contain two or three periods? [See
XBD6/d1, P107, L3399.]) or easy to misinterpret (I can't find it now,
but when I was reading through the draft there was one paragraph I had
to read four times to figure out which parentheses were presenting
parenthetical elements and which were literal characters.). I have not
seen any cases where having quotes makes the meaning ambiguous.
>
>The Austin Group Editors
>
>-----
>Andrew Josey The Open Group
>Austin Group Chair Apex Plaza,Forbury Road,
>Email: yyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Reading,Berks.RG1 1AX,England
>Tel: +44 118 9508311 ext 2250 Fax: +44 118 9500110
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