Request: Prevent extra spaces

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loquat149
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Request: Prevent extra spaces

Post by loquat149 »

One, perhaps the only, feature of Framemaker I miss since migrating to Mac OS NeXT and Mellel is the ability to limit the number of consecutive spaces entered by pressing the spacebar. In FM, you can enable a preference that will only allow one space to be entered. Perhaps I need to write a macro, Applescript, F-Script, or Regex that'll scan my document and remove the ubiquitous multiple spaces that accumulate while editing a manuscript...

Dave
TomEck
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Re: Request: Prevent extra spaces

Post by TomEck »

Actually I haven't checked what possibilities Mellel offers but that is for the simple reason that I use Spell Catcher which offers a "Prevent double spaces" function (SHIFT-SPACE overwrites this setting) as you have described for Framemaker. Maybe it is worth to take a look because Spell Catcher works in any application...

Thomas
macsailor
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Re: Request: Prevent extra spaces

Post by macsailor »

TomEck wrote:Actually I haven't checked what possibilities Mellel offers but that is for the simple reason that I use Spell Catcher which offers a "Prevent double spaces" function (SHIFT-SPACE overwrites this setting) as you have described for Framemaker. Maybe it is worth to take a look because Spell Catcher works in any application...

Thomas
I can recommend Spell Catcher as well. It’s a worth every penny, cent, öre, agorot …

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Peter Edwardsson
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shades
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Re: Request: Prevent extra spaces

Post by shades »

I started using Spell Catcher two weeks ago. Yes, well worth it.
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suavito
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Re: Request: Prevent extra spaces

Post by suavito »

I agree that an option to prevent typing more than one space in a row would come handy (OpenOffice has it too).

But you are asking about two different things: One is to prevent consecutive spaces caused by mistyping and the other is to remove consecutive spaces caused by copying and pasting chunks of text.

For the latter an app like TextSoap would be a solution (and for many, many other things, all of them available in every app through OS services and keyboard short cuts—highly recommended!). Another way would be a saved Search & Replace set in Mellel. You could do it with regular expressions or the simple way by just replacing two consecutive spaces by one. If you do so you might have to run the set for more than just one time because your text might contain more than two consecutive spaces.
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TomEck
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Re: Request: Prevent extra spaces

Post by TomEck »

Just for the record: Spell Catcher offers a "Multiple Spaces to Space" function as well. That means you could modify text you would like to paste into a document and removing double spaces. Another handy tool for such a task: PTHPasteboard

BTW: Both apps have many more functions...
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