i18n@... skribis:

>
> Well, a brief way to describe it (since you mentioned you are not
> interested in learning about encodings) is "that which is represented by
> the glyph".
>
> E.g. the concept of "the letter A" as opposed to the glyph on a page
> that represents the letter A.
>
> Maybe when you said "The closest we have to real angle brackets in
> standard fonts is single-guillemets" what you meant was "I consider
> the glyphs for single-guillemets in standard fonts to be a closer
> substitute then the glyphs for the less-than/greater-than brackets
> for the glyphs that are not present for angle brackets"?

That sounds like the same thing to me. I have to agree with Mr. Daniels
on this one. Angle brackets should be just as narrow as other brackets,
and the single-guillemets are the closest approximation.

I remember when computer manuals were typeset, and angle brackets
were used to indicate non-terminals in programming languages. Then
most computer manuals started being maintained as computer text
files, so greater-then and less-than symbols were substituted for the
angle brackets. But once people became used to this, there was a
tendency to use greater-than and less-than even when a particular
manual was typeset and true angle brackets were available.

--Ph. D.