Variable Typographer Quotes

Feature requests, and in-depth discussions of features and the way Mellel works

Moderators: Eyal Redler, redlers, Ori Redler

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Do we want to select Typographer's quote styles in the "Edit paragraph style" dialog?

Yes, I do
8
53%
Yes, but low prority
2
13%
No, not interested
5
33%
 
Total votes: 15

Hans-Reinhard Koch
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Variable Typographer Quotes

Post by Hans-Reinhard Koch »

Dear Ori, dear all,

In multilingual texts it would be nice to use different "smart" quotes according to the language used. As is you can set a smart quote style (English, French, German, etc.) in the preferences. This does not allow you to change the quote type within a manuscript easily. As I understand it, you have to get the wanted type of quote from the sub-sub-menu "INSERT > Special characters > quotation > [wanted quote]", which time consuming. I would prefer to have an option of choosing the "Typographer's quote" style (like in Preferences) in the "edit paragraph style …" dialog window. This would enable us to associate a quote style to a paragraph style.
Does anybody else want this option??

Hans-Reinhard
Hans-Reinhard Koch, Bonn, Germany
Mart°n
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Re: Variable Typographer Quotes

Post by Mart°n »

This idea was part of a heavily discussed language style:
http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php? ... e&start=15

Such a thing would not only allow a true multi-lingual spell check and hyphenation but also cover the need for different typographer’s quotes but till now the Redlers haven’t shown much interest in such an implementation.

Aside from that, you could enter various typographer’s quotes via key combinations. Given a German keyboard layout, you could enter the curly lower quotes via ALT + ^ (the key above the TAB key), upper curly quotes could be entered via ALT + 2, and the other upper curly quotes (66 shape) could be entered via ATL + SHIFT + 2 „“”

French quotes could be inserted via ATL+q and ALT + SHIFT + q «»

For other keyboard layouts those shortcuts may differ, but the OS X included keyboard viewer or the great utitity PopChar could reveal the correct key combos.
suavito
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Re: Variable Typographer Quotes

Post by suavito »

Yes I do, but as an OS wide service, not Mellel only.

There should be a way to change languages without changing the keyboard layout. Then you could use the spell checker more efficiently by dropping the "multi-lingual" setting for "active language" or something like that. Of course, the change of the language has to include the typographer's quotes. Which, additionally, should be editable for every language in the OS preferences. And it must be possible for a script to a) detect the language of a paragraph (or better: even smaller units down to words) and b) replace every " and ' or typographer's quotes of other languages with the proper ones.

That would be just great.

I know, this is the Mellel forum and not the Apple forum. But I think that this really must by working for the whole OS because very few people are working with just one program (for example, outliners or data storage programs are very common amongst writing people). Maybe everyone of us interested in such a feature should send a request to Apple. The automatic apostrophe new in Leopard is a tiny but very helpful feature and superior to everything else around at the time including Mellel (correct me if I'm wrong), which for me does indicate that at least some folks at Apple do care for the text people.
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Mart°n
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Re: Variable Typographer Quotes

Post by Mart°n »

By the way, I have voted with „no“ because I still believe that a language thing (like typographer’s quotes, spell-checker and hyphenation) shouldn’t be put into the paragraph setting but a level below (like suavito i think a word level is the right thing). If the quotation marks will be part of the paragraph setting, you couldn‘t write one French sentence inside an English paragraph and keep all the quotation marks right because your are limited to one typographer’s quotes setting per paragraph. That’s not something I like to see.
nicka
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Re: Variable Typographer Quotes

Post by nicka »

Agreed. Different types of typographer's quotes should be at the same level as spell-checking and hyphenation rules, and that has to be at the word level, not the paragraph level, for obvious reasons.
Hans-Reinhard Koch
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Re: Variable Typographer Quotes

Post by Hans-Reinhard Koch »

Yes, agreed too.
Putting the quote style down to character level would of course be better.
Hans-Reinhard
Hans-Reinhard Koch, Bonn, Germany
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