Subject: Re: Smart Quotes Issues (was Re: patch: SmartQuotesEnable preference item)
From: Aaron Lehmann (aaronl@vitelus.com)
Date: Wed Jul 19 2000 - 19:42:05 CDT
On Wed, 19 Jul 2000, sam th wrote:
> OK, here's my attempt to summarize the various issues around smart quotes
> and how they should be implemented in AbiWord.
>
> 1) Preferences
> How should the user decide whether or not they want Smart Quotes enabled
> in their document? There are several possibilities:
> a) Options/Preferences dialog (which tab?)
> b) Menu item
> c) Preferences file
> d) Other possibilites?
a. Any tab (i don't care :)).
> 2) How should smart quotes work (technical algorithm details)
> This is a technically, but not politcally, complex issue. Issues are:
> a) When should RegularQuote become SmartQuote? Inch marks should not, but
> quotations should. How do we determine this?
There is no good way to determine this, which is why I think that holding
down a certain modifier key should modify the behavior of inserting
quotes.
> c) Also, we have to deal with the interaction with single quotes, which
> sometimes surround quoted text, and sometimes are use as
> apostrophes.
See above.
> d) Finally, what is done with backquotes (`)?
curly-backquotes?
[snip]
> For this, it will clearly vary based on file format.
>
> a) MS Word (when it happens) - save Smart Quotes
See my answer to e) below, and also see 5).
> b) UTF8 - save Smart Quotes
> c) Text - no smart quotes, use regular quotes
> d) HTML - no smart quotes (this is *very* important(
Does HTML have "e; or something of the sort?
> e) AbiWord - here is the controversy. I think that .abw files should not
> contain smart quote unicode entites. At least one person has
> disagreed. Other opinions?
I think there should be &doublecurlyquoteright; and etc to indicate curly
quotes. If someone wrote the document that way and inserted curly quotes,
that should be indicated in the file. If someone else saw it and didn't
like the smart quotes, that's what search-and-replace is for.
(OT: Would anyone object to having an isearch featue in AbiWord? I think
it would be awesome, but it might raise some usability issues. Comments?)
> 5) Should it be possible to have Smart quotes in just part of the
> document?
Yes. I think a curly quote should != a straight quote. Based on the
quote settings at the _time that the quote character is pressed_, either a
quote or curly-quote should be inserted, which would be saved in the
document (AbiWord XML) as either " or &rightdoublecurlyquote;.
Aaron Lehmann
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