Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 08:04:32 +0100 (WET DST)
From: Laurent Siebenmann <sieben@cristal.math.u-psud.fr>
Message-Id: <200009070704.IAA04358@stats.math.u-psud.fr>
To: CyrTeX-en@vsu.ru, myke@mail.ru, sieben@cristal.math.u-psud.fr
Subject: Re: left and right double quotes


Dear Michael Kolodin,

     In your second reply of 19 August, you write: 

 > In Russian WinWord: 
 > we type "text" and WinWord automatically changes 
 > them to corresponding opening and closing double
 > signs which are absent on the keyboard, but exist in
 > cp1251; and ctrl`+", ctrl'+" do the same with English.

So MicroSoft has intelligently adaped its standard 
USA features to suit Russia.  Was this not available
under DOS??  Smart quotes appeared on the Mac
about 1987.

 > In TeX: we type <<text ,,intext`` outtext>>.

Since these are ligature driven the printing style seems 
to be hardwired in this typing.  The Windows typing

                "text 'intext' outtext" 

yields eight-bit code that can be interpreted in many
ways without retyping.  That is a small but palpable
benefit (?) of commercial "wordprocessors". (??)

     I still see little conflict between the ASCII-Cyrillic
use of ' ! \ as "escapes and Russian use of the same
characters in typing 8-bit text.  What am I missing?

               Cheers

                     Laurent Siebenmann