Re: [lojban] Attitudinals

[pycyn@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/13/2001 4:32:17 PM Central Daylight Time,
thedward@barsoom.net writes:

Most Microsoft applications have an option to turn off "smart quotes".
Using such advantages in a Microsoft Word document is perfectly acceptable,
as such a document is already limited to the audience of those who
use such products. However if you want to present professional looking
documents in HTML it seems reasonable to abide by the standards created for
such documents. If you want more control over presentation than is allowed
by standard HTML, perhaps you should consider publishing in PDF.

This is an old and tired argument, but, since most people use Microsoft
everything, shouldn't people who want to have users meet their standards
rather than asking the vast majority to conform to the miniscule minorities
inferior "standards"?  Why, for example, doesn't HTML have "smart quotes"?
And one character tabs and umlauts and all the rest of the useful critters an
ordinary word processor provides?  In fact it does have most of them if
you're willing to type a half-dozen characters to get them; why not just one
or two?  I'm sure there are non-cultic reasons for these choices.  My only
point is that insulting 90% of potential users is probably not good PR, nor
is imposing not obviously motivated restrictions on them.