[Bug]: Bulgarian quotation should use „ “ instead of " "

[UrtsiSantsi]

Under today's widespread English influence it is not uncommon to see " " used, but the correct one is „ “.

[bragefuglseth]

Is that what’s mostly used when typing on a keyboard as well? In Norwegian typography, for instance, one should really use the «guillemets», but what ends up actually being used are "these" because of their much more convenient key placement. Same for English, which has ”proper quotation marks“, but often ends up being written with "typewriter" quotation for the same reason. It’s corrected by the computer in word processors anyways. To avoid confusion, the generated text generally uses letters representing the actual keys people use.

If it’s common practice to use the keys representing „ and ” and it’s a habit people should internalize when typing Bulgarian, it can be changed, of course.

[UrtsiSantsi]

I personally use " ", but I'm not really representative. I rarely write anything official in Bulgarian and even less so on Linux - I just realized LibreOffice and Text Editor both don't have Bulgarian Spell check :smile: @twlvnn: What is your opinion?

[twlvnn]

I think we should go with the English quotes. A stretch goal could be having a customization option to change the type of quotation character you can use for use cases as @UrtsiSantsi mentions, if you're practicing for professional work/academia. If users prefer the other quotes they might share their feedback about it. I think its best to get a good sample of users' feedback first and then we can revisit the issue . I tried looking at other apps to see how they tackle this problem but I didn't find a feature like that.

Official quotation marks are used primarily in handwriting, but I don't have any data to be sure what online users prefer. Bulgarians differ on keyboard layouts too (bg vs bg phonetic) where quotes are either on the 4 key or next to enter. The 4 key now gives you English quotes, it used to give the Bulgarian quotes but some got used to using 4 already so its difficult to find a sweet spot for everyone.

[UrtsiSantsi]

@twlvnn: I don't think there is a statistic about what Bulgarian users preferences. As for users sharing their feedback I don't have much hope about it - even widely used apps have only a few hundred reviews in "Software" and statistically the Bulgarians among them will be close to zero :smile: .

But there are a few things to consider:

• Government sites, official documents and books use „ “
• News site are mixed - some use the „ “ , others the " ", but they are generally consistent
• Quick look around random forums shows mixed use
• Translations, even yours :smile:, use „ “
• LibreOffice changes " " to „ “ when Bulgarian language is selected
• Using " " is slightly easier that „ “ because we use only the same symbol, but not by much, at least on "Traditional phonetic"

So the question is do we promote correct use or easy of use? I think that we should promote the correct use, since it is a typing trainer.

[twlvnn]

That's a perspective I can get behind and I think you bring up a fair point that feedback will be scarce, you're right that we should promote the correct use and users will benefit more from that in the long run than typing a little bit faster in the short term. Let's go with the official quotation marks.

[bragefuglseth]

Alright, I can go with that, but if I ever get an angry Bulgarian in this issue tracker asking why the app uses those, I'll ping both of you to argue with them :grin:

[UrtsiSantsi]

@bragefuglseth: Why are you making „ and “aliases to " - isn't the idea to type what you see, not what you think :smile:

[bragefuglseth]

Mostly for consistency with «guillemet» quotation marks, which were proposed aliased to " in #22. It makes it possible to optionally use " and have it automatically corrected, since that’s what a word processor would do for you. It’s still possible to type „ and ” directly if you’d like to do it properly, of course.