[scribus] Automagically insert correct German quotation marks instead of manually inserting them?

[Christoph Schäfer]

Am Mittwoch, 25. August 2010, 03:02:14 schrieb John Jason Jordan:
> On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:11:55 +0200
> 
> Christoph Schäfer <christoph-schaefer at gmx.de> dijo:
> >There is currently no way to do this automatically, except via Search
> >& Replace in connection with regular expressions.
> >
> >There exists a script called quote.py in ~/share/scribus/samples. This
> >used to work with 1.2.x, but my tests showed that it doesn't work with
> >1.3.8+ any longer, and it also inserted English quotes only. Maybe one
> >of our scripting gurus can update the script so that it 1) works again
> >in current versions and 2) has an option to select different quotation
> >patterns.
> 
> My German sux rox, but I don't understand why the operating system
> doesn't just handle this.
> 
> I do write in Spanish occasionally, and I have installed a Spanish
> keyboard layout in the operating system. Although my computer has a US
> English keyboard, switching to the Spanish keyboard allows me to type
> as though I was on a Spanish computer. Doesn't this work for German? Or
> does Scribus somehow ignore the keyboard layout?
> 

The problem here is typographical quotation marks, and this is a problem for 
other languages, including English, too. By default Scribus inserts "straight" 
quotes (inch characters) instead of typographical quotes.

We need to add a feature that allows for automatic insertion based on language 
settings, and even this needs to be configurable. Case in point: In German 
there are three different ways to use quotation marks: German curly quotes: ,, 
'', inverse guillemets: >> << (in Austria and Germany) and regular guillemets: 
<< >> (the latter only in Swiss German), so the user will need an option to 
configure this. In French, there is also an additional thin space between the 
guillemets and the text, which means this is not easy to solve. IMHO, OO.o has 
a very good solution for the issue (freely configurable quotation marks).

Until the feature is available, an updated version of "quote.py" could help to 
make life easier for users -- and once updated, it should become one of the 
default scripts in the menu.

Christoph