Re: GCC 's quoting typographic conventions

[Robert Dewar <dewar at gnat dot com>]

Paul Schlie wrote:
> Re: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2004-10/msg01263.html
>     http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2004-10/msg02679.html
>
> I suspect the strongest argument in favor GCC simply utilizing plane old
> ASCII typographical " and ' quote delimiter characters when possible, is
> that GCC is first and foremost a development tool, generating text which
> just as likely to be consumed by other tools as read my humans.
>
> Therefore GCC should arguably adopt the conventions most friendly to that
> purpose; where although it may be enabled to make its output typographically
> prettier, doing at the risk of potentially complicating it's subsequent use
> likely isn't a good decision. As opposed to a text processing tool who's
> purpose is to generate ideally human friendly text, such as intended for
> documentation for example.

To me, this is a very strong argument, given that the argument on the
other side is really nothing more than a relatively unimportant aesthetic
concern (and that aesthetic may well be overridden in practice by strange
results in environments that do not handle the extended character set).