Hello,
In no latin language " is the default quotation mark. There are different variants, for example:
“…” in English
« … » in French
„…“ or »…« in German
”…” in Swedish
„…” in Dutch
etc.
Of course, the " is prevalent on the computer, but this is because of no reason (aside that Microsoft and the keyboard makers are too lazy to add some quotation marks on their keyboards). Unicode is fully supported by almost every website or email application nowaydays. These quotation marks are also available in every font, so there are no issues with displaying them. The only issue is the keyboard. It is still something from typewriter age.
Programmes like MS Word or Openoffice replace the " quotation marks automatically according to the language by the correct, “typographic” ones.
One could say “who cares?”, but well, if we do it like that, we could also ignore correct spelling completely. It is sad that nobody cares about correct quotation marks, but why not use them if they pose absolutely no technical issue?
So I would propose the following:
1. Add smart quotations. In German, English etc. this is quite easy: If the quotation mark is after a space, convert it to the starting quotation mark. If it is followed by a space or some other characters, convert it to a closing one. In languages, such as French, where the quotation mark is surrounded by spaces on both side, I'm not quite sure how to do that.
2. Just add the correct quotation marks on the current quotation mark key as extra symbols. So if you press x for a longer time, you first get ", then “ and then ”. This should pose absolutely no problem.
I really really think this is important. Why should we still have typing like in the typewriter age? Just because MS is too lazy to change it?
Thanks!