Re: [Groff] gkurz, a short introduction for german users

[Gunnar Ritter]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> wrote:

> > To avoid this, you need to decide what characters to use as quotes
> > on a per-font basis. (None of the Postscript fonts I know have
> > dedicated german quotes. Does Unicode?)
>
> Yes:
>
>   U+201E    DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK
>   U+201F    DOUBLE HIGH-REVERSED-9 QUOTATION MARK

No, U+201F is not suitable for German quoting. In this
combination, it looks like

        „this‟

which is clearly not appropriate. The usual pair is
U+201E and U+201C,

        „this“

See also figure 6-3, p. 210 of Unicode 5.0 as well as
the remark on p. 211, “All other quotation marks may
represent opening or closing quotation marks depending
on the usage”, which includes U+201C.

The actual point with Verdana is that its U+201C
character, “quotedblleft”, does not look like U+201C
at all. U+201C has its broader end at the downside
(like the German right quote) and not on the upside,
as the Verdana glyph has. In fact, the Verdana glyph
more closely resembles U+201F, which has its broader
end at the upside and is not suitable for German
quoting exactly for that reason.

        Gunnar