Hello, On Thu, 2003-12-18 at 00:45, ephemeron wrote: > On 17. December 2003 at 4:33PM +0100, > Craig Bradney <cbradney at zip.com.au> wrote: > > > On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 14:33, dave wrote: > > > On Wednesday, December 17, 2003, at 01:17 PM, Craig Bradney > > > wrote: > > > > > > > On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 12:43, John Christian Stoddart wrote: > > > > > > > > > hardwiring the quote system to the language > > > > > > > > Wouldnt it make more sense for normal typing to use the > > > > default for the language, and those "irrational" graphic > > > > designers to use the "Insert Special" option? > > > > > > > IMHO it would make most sense to be a preference default, and > > > not a *hardwired* default, which is what I think John was > > > saying :) > > > > > > So a graphic designer has the ability to change the default, > > > in addition to the "Insert Special" option, and gets the best > > > of both worlds, while most people are just served up the > > > default and think 'Oh, thats neat' :) > > > > Then you would have to have a preferences dialog for all > > languages, giving quoting (and possibly other) character > > definitions. Im not saying this isnt possible.. > > Rather than have the user mind the language, I think it's better > simply to have a simple character substitution table similar to > the one implemented for missing fonts, something like: > > CHARACTER SEQUENCE REPLACEMENT > > -- <em-dash> > (or <en-dash> if typeface is too "fat") > <space>"<letter> <space><left-double-quote><letter> > <letter>'<letter> <letter><right-single-quote><letter> > > A simple regex seach-and-replace function will be a reasonable > substitute.
This is a really good idea, especially if it could be used in conjuntion with the story editor. A generic batch or real-time, regex and/or table-driven, search and replace, not only for the quotation marks dilemma, but for a host of other applications too. > > Anyway.. will discuss it with Franz more tonight on IRC. > > Typographical quotes can be inserted interactively, via > "autocorrection", or noninteractively, when the text is > "preformatted" before being imported into the document. > Autocorrection is a standard feature of bloated word processors > like OpenOffice and MS Word. I don't know if they can autoformat > a newly opened document that doesn't already contain > typographical quotes. But this isn't too much of a lack since > this can be done semi-automatically via search-and-replace. I'm not that familiar with either application, but the more generic the mechanism, the greater the possibility of reuse. Just think of the wide array of possibilities: ligature substitution: ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl; dipthong substitution: ae and oe; expert ligatures, acronym expansion, external markup, just to name a few. > Both ways of placing typographical quotes should prove useful, if > let's say, I do most of my typing in Emacs (the body text) but > would rather do my headlines, captions or callouts in Scribus. It's fun to see this idea is germinating already ... Take care, John
