From: Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Aug 15 2002 - 22:57:53 EDT
--- Karl Ove Hufthammer <lister@huftis.org> wrote:
> Tomas Frydrych <tomas@frydrych.uklinux.net> wrote in
> news:3D5ACC3C.8253.4D74CC@localhost:
>
> > Under the circumstances I see only two realistic
> > options; (1) no smart quotes at all. This is
> > pretty much the case at the moment, and I find it
> > rather unsatisfactory. (2) Assume that all
> > straight quotes are quotes or mid-word
> > apostorphies and let the user handle the rest
> > manually. If he does not like it, let him turn it
> > off.
>
> Or 3) Make the smart quotes stuff 'smarter' (Quark's
> smart quotes are smarter than Word's and AbiWord's),
I think we really need to get the smart quote code
centralized into a class somehow. Once that's done it
will be easy for people to try to make it smarter on
a language-by-language basis even. It would be really
neat to have a it rule-based at some point.
> and implement a piece of smart quote selection UI. I
> know this sounds complicated, and it is (especially
> implementing it cross-platform), but this is the way
> to *really* solve the smart quote problem. Here's my
> suggesion: When the user inputs " or ', it's
> converted by the really smart smart quotes system,
> and a two-column character selection box is
> displayed below the character, containing various
> quote characters (and apostrophs, ditto marks, &c.)
> (with the ones used in the chosen language at the
> top). The user can then chose the one she wants
> using the arrow keys, or the mouse. The quote
> character is then changed. If the user inputs a new
> character, the box disappears (and the character
> typed is inserted). This doesn't complicate typing,
> as you can just type as you've always done, and
> " are converted to smart quotes. But when you need
> to change the quote characters, this is easily
> accomplished with a few key presses.
I think this is an excellent idea. Basically a popup
menu that pops up by itself and doesn't steal focus,
then pops back away if you continue typing. It
sounds rather like the Word XP "Paste special" popup.
In older Word, it would open a dialog and you'd choose
which format you wanted to paste in. In Word XP it
just pastes it in the usual format, opens the popup so
you can change the format if wanted a different one,
or just ignore it and it goes away when you do the
next thing. I find this very intuitive and in my eyes
a good bit of UI from MS this time.
> I could create a few mock-up screen shots showing
> what I mean if you're interested. The quote
> character selection box should look similar to the
> prefs box at page 3 of
> <URL:
> http://www.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2043.pdf >.
Unfortunately I don't have access to PDF here and
Google's HTML version doesn't cut it in this case ):
> > I think as soon as you start striving for
> > something "better" than this, i.e., you start
> > assuming that you can work out when the quote is
> > not a quote (which you cannot), you will end up
> > with behaviour which is less predictable, and
> > consquently more irritating for the user.
>
> I agree. Predicatability is more important. Else
> you'll only confuse the user. (But the current smart
> quotes system can also be improved without becoming
> unpredictable!)
Centralize it first, add the smarts as we figure out
what they should be (:
Andrew.
> --
> Karl Ove Hufthammer
=====
http://linguaphile.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/translator.pl http://www.abisource.com
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