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

[John Jason Jordan]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:18:49 +0200
Peter Nermander <peter at nermander.se> dijo:

>> My German sux rox, but I don't understand why the operating system
>> doesn't just handle this.
>
>The problem here is,  if I'm not wrong, that German quotation marks
>are different at the start of a quote and at the end of a qoute.
>
>The problem for the operating system is to know whether the inserted
>mark is at the start of the quote or at the end of the quote. To find
>out that you must look at the surrounding text and any other quotation
>marks before and after the new. And even then sometimes the guess can
>be wrong.

Every language has its typographic peculiarities, but the problem you
describe must surely be manageable with software. I say this because
the opening and closing quotes are different in English as well, yet my
computer generally figures it out automatically. 

Having said that, it just occurred to me that not all programs handle
the opening vs. closing quotes. Minimal text editors just use the
straight quotes. But all major programs do it correctly. 

But having said that i also realized that there are few rare situations
where even OOo does not do it correctly. For example, there is a famous
poem that starts with the contraction 'twas (for "it was"). When I type
'twas I get an opening quote, but that particular contraction is
supposed to start with a closing quote. I have to fool OOo by typing a
letter, then the quote, then "twas", then deleting the initial letter.

I wonder if OOo handles the German opening and closing quotes
correctly, or at least as correctly as it does the English opening and
closing quotes. If so, could Scribus borrow the code?