:"<R>" for symbol("<R>") makes sense to me, so if it's not in the way of anything else, I'm all for it.
And yeah, :"<R>" == "<R>" returns true, so I don't see how this could really make something impossible to do, which is possible today. I guess if there's code out that quotes literal strings like that it'll break, but I doubt that there's a lot of it... I have no idea how such a change would be implemented, though, so I'm afraid I won't be of much help making it happen.
// T