Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> I see exactly what I typed: single guillemets. OTOH when you Windows
> users type edhs and thorns, I see other things. Mac and Windows standard
> fonts differ.

Mac and Windows fonting and encoding, nowadays, are (thankfully) much
more standardized...

> > If, perhaps, single guillemets (139 decimal and 155) were meant, please
> > send in utf-8!
>
> I have no idea whether I can do that, and no interest in learning
> whether I can.

*sigh*
Granted upgrading is expensive and shifting from the Old to the New(er)
is time consuming and to some degree annoying, _but_... it has its
advantages.
While you state you do not understand or care about the issues that
arise in the newsgroup regarding Unicode, I'd submit that Unicode has
helped bridge the Mac vs Windows fonting problems and allows digital
discussion of multiple writing systems/fonts/etc.

IIRC, you're still using a pre-OSX Mac, right? even pre-OS9 (??)...
fortunately, more recent systems on both Mac and PC platforms are now
built such that the cross-platform annoyances are minimized - at least
in terms of encoding, etc.

> The delimiters I laid out were in use in linguistics decades before
> personal computers were thought of. The greater/less than angles already
> refer to diachronic processes ("becomes"/"comes from"), so it is
> disconcerting to see them used in place of real angle brackets for
> transliterations. The closest we have to real angle brackets in standard
> fonts is single-guillemets.

Hear hear!
Although, I definitely would have to say that I've seen greater/less
than angles used exactly in the same way as has been used in this forum
(as the single guillemets are used) by "older generation" linguists when
writing up the blackboard and/or whiteboard. The difference in use
between delimiting text versus indicating diachronic change was readily
evident given the context... then again, I guess the distinction in
angled brackets verses greater/less than signs are neutralized in
handwriting on the blackboard....

cheers,
-Patrick