Re: Quotation marks becoming distorted

[Allen Watson]

Title: Re: Quotation marks becoming distorted

On or near 6/26/04 10:09 AM, Paul Berkowitz at [EMAIL PROTECTED] observed:

> Your quotation marks are seen correctly by the recipient to begin with. The
> error creeps in when they replay to you, and their email client incorrectly
> pretends (lies) that the sender's message is being sent in basic 7-bit ASCII,
> when in fact it isn't, since it contains curly quotes and apostrophes. Since
> it sends its message actually using Windows encoding for these characters
> you'll see the wrong characters on your Mac, but the recipient will have seen
> the right characters (at least the first time). [As you can see your example
> didn't work very well - they came across as curly quotes in Entourage anyway.]
>
> To ensure this won't happen, even with recipients who have stupid email
> clients, go to Tools/AutoCorrect/AutoFormat, and uncheck the box that says to
> replace straight quotes with smart quotes. Then they will always appear as
> "quotes" under all circumstances.

You can also choose to view their message with a different encoding: select "Format->Character Set->Western European (Windows)" and the funny characters will change back to curly quotes. I've no idea, however, what happens next, when you send a reply using that encoding off to Windows users, or to Mac users.

The Satimage Scripting Addition, which is free, has a "Convert to Mac" command that will find all these Windows characters and replace them with the Mac equivalent, which will enable you to start clean again with your reply. Just open the message, click its "Edit" button in the toolbar, and run this script:

-- Change various PC characters to Mac version, particularly curly quotes
-- Replace the current text selection or, if none, operate on contents of clipboard    
-- If there is no open message, the contents of the clipboard will be processed
tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
    activate
    -- Save clipboard contents
    set saveClip to the clipboard
    try
        
        set the clipboard to selection of the front window as text -- Copy selection to clipboard
        set theSelection to the clipboard
        set noselection to false
    on error
        try
            -- Try entire open message
            set theMsg to displayed message of the front window
            set theSelection to the content of theMsg
            set the clipboard to theSelection
        on error theErr
            display dialog theErr
        end try
        set noselection to true
    end try
    if theSelection is not "" then
        set newSelection to convert to Mac theSelection
        -- Put it back now
        set the clipboard to newSelection
        if noselection is false then
            try
                set the selection to newSelection -- Paste it back
            on error
                display dialog "Tried to paste but could not."
            end try
            set the clipboard to saveClip
        else
            set the content of theMsg to newSelection
        end if
    end if
end tell