477373 - Not able to find typografic apostrophe ( ’ ) when looking for typewriter apostrophe ( ' )

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 276757

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect)

Description

[Karel Jára]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; cs; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; cs; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6

If you enter a word with typewriter apostrophe ( ' ) to quick find, you won’t find words with typographic apostrophe ( ’ ) in the page.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try to find a word with typewriter apostrophe, e.g. “it's”.

Actual Results:  
The browser won’t find words with typographic apostrophe in the page, e.g. “it’s”.

Expected Results:  
The browser should find the words.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

You are aware of the fact that starting the findbar with apostrophe is meant for finding text in links?

Comment 2

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

This is very similar to bug 477373 in that the issue is about different "spellings". However, in this case there isn't a clear-cut answer that one is "right" and the other "wrong"; use of the typographic apostrophe U+2019 should really be preferred, but most users will be typing U+0027 because that's what is available on their keyboard.

Therefore, IMO this is a case where it might be desirable to match the "typographic" forms even if the user's search specified the straight ASCII apostrophe. The same applies to double-quote marks (ASCII " versus typographic “...”.) Otherwise we effectively penalize authors who make the effort to produce better-looking text by use of the typographically correct punctuation characters, by making it hard for users to search on their pages.

Comment 3

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Thanks, I think the resolution in bug 276757 will be decisive for the resolution of this bug.