# HG changeset patch # User David Barts # Date 1618334339 25200 # Node ID a1cda4ff6d4b691c72f8900572b2d8e5f528c412 # Parent 70e75dd07e03eaac2d9a982f452ca9a02e872bfb Add README. diff -r 70e75dd07e03 -r a1cda4ff6d4b README.txt --- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/README.txt Tue Apr 13 10:18:59 2021 -0700 @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +This was written because I got sick of text I entered in many +applications having ugly "straight quotes" instead of the more +attractive “curly” quotes. I found it needlessly awkward to type the +Unicode characters necessary to do that, and it was easy enough to code +up a state machine that took care of most of the common cases one +encounters in English language texts. + +While doing so, I also got the itch to experiment with using the Python +array module and the buffer protocol to implement writable strings, +because I was curious as to how much a fairly straightforward attempt at +same might speed up code (such as the state machine I had just written) +that makes many tiny, single-character modifications to a long strong. +It turns out that it is *very* hard to improve on Python's own strings, +but I left my own code in because its performance isn't all *that* +awful, either.