I had a terrible time when someone used "smart quotes" (beautified Office quotation marks) in a configuration file. I believe this was only possible because they copied it from Outlook.
I never understood why a "stylistic" choice requires separate characters. If we don't need a serif and non-serif version of every character and instead leave it to the software, why can't we do the same with the "smart" quotes?
“quoted”
"quoted"
One thing that makes computers more powerful than analog tools is that they are much much much more structured.
So while we should not take computer limits for granted I think that the opposite extreme is just as if not even more absurd.
Or, you know, you could just have separate characters for opening/closing quotation marks. ;-)
Yes, that's how ligatures work. Pairing across characters is the one I'm not sure I've heard of before in fonts.
Edit: Besides, how do you think these are typed on keyboards without separate keys? The software already detects and replaces them based on context.
Sadly the new official french azerty keyboard has dedicated keys for both opening and closing quotes, and the good ol' simple quote tucked away behind modifier keys. As a dev I hate it. (arguably I should not even use azerty for development but that's another issue)
I don’t think it’s a purely stylistic choice, there is actually semantics to it:
“ opening quotation mark, i.e.: starts the quote
” closing quotation mark, i.e.: ends the quote
Some common ambiguous pairs:
’bout - abbreviation for "about"
‘bout - starting a quote about a round of a fight
’cause - abbreviation for "because"
‘cause - starting a quote about a reason or ideal
’em - abbreviation for "them"
‘em - starting a quote about typographical units
’n’ - abbreviation for "and"
‘n’ - speaking of the letter itself
most typefaces: “Hello” „Hallo“
Now I only use vim as a scratchpad because I've been bitten too much by GUI apps