[Scribus] german quotation marks

[John Christian Stoddart]

Hello,

On Thu, 2003-12-18 at 00:45, ephemeron wrote:
> On 17. December 2003 at 4:33PM +0100,
> Craig Bradney <cbradney at zip.com.au> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 14:33, dave wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, December 17, 2003, at 01:17 PM, Craig Bradney
> > > wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 12:43, John Christian Stoddart wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > hardwiring the quote system to the language
> > > >
> > > > Wouldnt it make more sense for normal typing to use the
> > > > default for the language, and those "irrational" graphic
> > > > designers to use the "Insert Special" option?
> > > >
> > > IMHO it would make most sense to be a preference default, and
> > > not a *hardwired* default, which is what I think John was
> > > saying :)
> > > 
> > > So a graphic designer has the ability to change the default,
> > > in addition to the "Insert Special" option, and gets the best
> > > of both worlds, while most people are just served up the
> > > default and think 'Oh, thats neat' :)
> > 
> > Then you would have to have a preferences dialog for all
> > languages, giving quoting (and possibly other) character
> > definitions. Im not saying this isnt possible..
> 
> Rather than have the user mind the language, I think it's better
> simply to have a simple character substitution table similar to
> the one implemented for missing fonts, something like:
> 
> CHARACTER SEQUENCE    REPLACEMENT
> 
> --                    <em-dash>
>                       (or <en-dash> if typeface is too "fat")
> <space>"<letter>      <space><left-double-quote><letter>
> <letter>'<letter>     <letter><right-single-quote><letter>
> 
> A simple regex seach-and-replace function will be a reasonable
> substitute.

This is a really good idea, especially if it could be used in conjuntion
with the story editor. A generic batch or real-time, regex and/or
table-driven, search and replace, not only for the quotation marks
dilemma, but for a host of other applications too. 

> > Anyway.. will discuss it with Franz more tonight on IRC.
> 
> Typographical quotes can be inserted interactively, via
> "autocorrection", or noninteractively, when the text is
> "preformatted" before being imported into the document.
> Autocorrection is a standard feature of bloated word processors
> like OpenOffice and MS Word.  I don't know if they can autoformat
> a newly opened document that doesn't already contain
> typographical quotes.  But this isn't too much of a lack since
> this can be done semi-automatically via search-and-replace.

I'm not that familiar with either application, but the more generic the
mechanism, the greater the possibility of reuse.

Just think of the wide array of possibilities: ligature substitution:
ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl; dipthong substitution: ae and oe; expert
ligatures, acronym expansion, external markup, just to name a few.

> Both ways of placing typographical quotes should prove useful, if
> let's say, I do most of my typing in Emacs (the body text) but
> would rather do my headlines, captions or callouts in Scribus.

It's fun to see this idea is germinating already ...

Take care,


John