Re: Fwd: Smart quotes patch

Hi Bobby,

Bobby Weinmann wrote:
> On Feb 7, 2008 4:45 AM, Tomas Frydrych <tf@o-hand.com> wrote:
>> Nope, undo immediately after smart-quote replacement should revert back
>> to the plain quote. Only a second undo should remove the actual insertion.
>
> This makes no sense to me, since if you don't want smart quotes, just
> disable them.

Sometimes you do not want just one smart quote, and this is a simple way
to allow you to do that.

>> Add strings for the four or so quote types to the XAPString tables as I
>> suggested. This allows you to fine grain it as needed (e.g., can have
>> different quotes for de-DE and de-CH).
>
> Yes however, I have been using this as my guide:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark,_non-English_usage
>
> Wherein it states:
> - Sometimes, especially in books, the angle quotation marks (see
> below) are used in Germany and Austria, albeit in reversed order: »O«.
>
> This may be wrong. Can a German confirm or deny it?
>
> Assuming it is true, one locale can have more than one quoting system.

There is nothing stopping someone to use the angle quotation marks when
they want to by explicitly inserting those characters, and there is no
reason why we should over complicate things for ourselves because of
marginal cases; make the common case just work, the uncommon cases
should be possible, but need not be easy or specially catered for.

> I had never used the "Set Language" option before. I have now
> explored it a little, and this approach has some major problems:
> 1) See above about multiple quotation styles for one locale.
> 2) There is a "no proofing" option. A German might use this to turn
> off spell checking, but might still want German smart quotes.

As I said, no need to over complicate things because of marginal cases
-- if you want to both turn spellchecking off and have fancy quotes, you
insert the fancy quotes by hand; yes it is pain, but you deserve it.

> 3) It does not save my preference between documents. I assume it just
> reverts to the machine's locale, in which case, that's probably OK.

The language setting is stored alongside each fragment of the text.

> 5) Is having to change the language not "having to mess about with anything."

If you want to have a multi-lingual document which uses multi-lingual
typographic conventions, you need to indicate what the language is, that
is not an onerous requirement. On the other hand, adding a whole new set
of UI for controlling minute details of typographic layout is
undesirable in a word processor (there are specialized DTP packages that
allow you much finer control over that sort of a thing, if you require it).

> This seems like it's basically a spelling/grammar checking option
> which is being repurposed for a function it doesn't match.

No, this is a generic language option that affects not only
spellchecking but, for example, also how text is shaped in complex scripts.

> I disagree completely that this is a marginal case.
>
> Harry Potter books are the best selling books of all time (with the
> exception of the Bible). Read anything said by Hagrid, it is littered
> with these. Other authors start words with apostrophes in dialog all
> the time. Not to mention, one of the most famous English poems,
> "'Twas the night before Christmas."

That does not make it any less marginal case -- what proportion of
AbiWord users is writing that type of text is the question that needs to
drive the feature set. I can guarantee Moore did not use AbiWord, but
who knows, perhaps Rolling does ;).

> Though, you did mention a work-around, what did you mean?

You start the word with a bogus character, which you delete once your
quote has been replaced; again, uncommon cases do not have to be easy,
only possible.

> My proposal is to have a smart quotes tab in the options dialog (as in
> the patch I submitted). To this I would add a combobox with a list of
> predefined list of smart quote styles and a separate table tying each
> style to a locale. One of the entries would be "Custom" which would
> enable you to set the quote characters manually. Abiword would store
> the quote settings for each of the 4 quote chars. If no setting
> exists, it would default to the current locale's default.

I really find this unnecessarily complicated for a word processor.
Historically we have aimed to reduce the UI clutter, and I personally am
not convinced that the extra complexity is justified in a word
processor; others might feel different.

Tomas
Received on Fri Feb 8 09:26:03 2008