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".