My current source of frustration with Movable Type is that smart punctuation doesn’t Just Work.
Daring Fireball recommends storing dumb punctuation in the database and using a Movable Type template module to
educate it during the rendering process. Certainly this is better than writing the HTML entities by hand, but I think the database should store the truth. That’s the only way to ensure that the output is what the author intended, because every education algorithm gets a few cases wrong. Sure, most of these cases involve inch marks, nested quotations, or deliberate examples of incorrect punctuation, but it’s the principle! I shouldn’t have to think about how the text will be processed on the way out of the database, because that might change.
Current solution: make a BBEdit stationery pad with smart quotes, soft wrapping, and the language set to HTML. Generate HTML using the Markup tools to make sure it uses dumb quotes. If I want dumb quotes for an inch mark, hold down Control. Use the Translate tool just before pasting into iCab. Flout Amdahl’s law.
Geoffrey reminded me to check out this site full of Pink Floyd
interviews. I love the one where Roger Waters says that
OK, Computer has a few good tracks but that Radiohead’s “red” album is beyond him. I don’t get it either.
