Re: Smart quotes via finite state machine

[onf]

Hi Branden,

On Mon Sep 23, 2024 at 3:05 AM CEST, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> A document author should say (type) what they mean.
> [...]
> If you mean a foot mark or inches mark rather than a quotation mark, you
> should say so to groff.

I understand this approach. The problem comes when trying to import
text which does not use Unicode's “”‘’ characters (most web resources,
for instance) into groff. In those cases, one would have to replace all
the instances by hand, which is what I've mostly been addressing as one
of my major use cases for groff is converting various resources into
ebooks for my (and sometimes others') reading pleasure.

Perhaps I should have explained this better.

(Now that I think about it, implementing the state machine I suggested
 as a separate program and applying it to the source text before
 the import would probably be simpler.)

~ onf