(I seem to be winding up fixating on non-asciisms for org-mode; strange)
"Smart" quotes can be annoying when they aren't smart enough. But when they work you can miss them. I'm attaching a patch that defines a custom variable org-smart-quotes (nil by default), which when non-nil causes the " and ' characters to display as “smart” quotes, hopefully the right ones. They're still ' and " in the underlying text, just overlaid with “”.
I started working on parallel patches on the export end (in the
-e- files in contrib); it would really help org-mode's standing as
a lightweight markup language, imo, but then I saw that's already
underway; I had just looked in the wrong exports.
I also note that my post here dated May 9
(http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/55756 ) has gone
completely without comment, good or bad. Did I miss something?
Did it not get through (it shows up on gmane)? At least one of
the changes submitted there I would think is pretty
uncontroversial.
~mark