Zim

Add Option To Use Typographically Correct Punctuation

Bug #1516431 reported by Žygimantas Beručka
10
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Zim
Confirmed
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

It would be great if you could add an option to input typographically correct punctuation and/or an option replace the incorrect ones with the correct ones. I'm talking about quotation marks, apostrophes, dashes, elipses, etc. See http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/ C.f.:

"Don't be dumb"
“You’re smart!”

Word processors such as Libre Writer and MS Word do it by default today. I love to take notes and write my papers for the uni in Zim but once I copy the text for the final edit to a word processor, the punctuation, unsurprisingly is typographically incorrect. For it is not automatically converted. Going manually through them all is a huge waste of time. I learned this the hard way after writing my thesis in Zim.

I understand that such a usage of Zim is beyond the scope of what you imagined Zim for, but love it precisely for extensive writing rather than just code (which I don't write) or taking small notes. Being able to input punctuation as it is used by default in the word processors would be simply amazing.

Revision history for this message
Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg) wrote : Re: [Bug 1516431] [NEW] Add Option To Use Typographically Correct Punctuation

Probably we could do so when exporting. What I would need to implement that
is a set of rules that describe what to replace when. E.g. a rule could be:
"Straight-double-quote with no space on the left and space or end-of-line
on the right to be replaced with closing-double-quote".

If you could refer to such a rule set or put some down in writing I'm happy
to look at implementing them in the export function.

Regards,

Jaap

On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 8:26 PM, Žygimantas Beručka <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Public bug reported:
>
> It would be great if you could add an option to input typographically
> correct punctuation and/or an option replace the incorrect ones with the
> correct ones. I'm talking about quotation marks, apostrophes, dashes,
> elipses, etc. See http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/ C.f.:
>
> "Don't be dumb"
> “You’re smart!”
>
> Word processors such as Libre Writer and MS Word do it by default today.
> I love to take notes and write my papers for the uni in Zim but once I
> copy the text for the final edit to a word processor, the punctuation,
> unsurprisingly is typographically incorrect. For it is not automatically
> converted. Going manually through them all is a huge waste of time. I
> learned this the hard way after writing my thesis in Zim.
>
> I understand that such a usage of Zim is beyond the scope of what you
> imagined Zim for, but love it precisely for extensive writing rather
> than just code (which I don't write) or taking small notes. Being able
> to input punctuation as it is used by default in the word processors
> would be simply amazing.
>
> ** Affects: zim
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to Zim.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1516431
>
> Title:
> Add Option To Use Typographically Correct Punctuation
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/1516431/+subscriptions
>

Changed in zim:
status: New → Confirmed
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Revision history for this message
M F (apollo666-66) wrote :

Hi,

This also affects me but I see that there are many combinations of this problem because every different set of keyboard layout, key binding and punctuation rules makes one case. As a first start and to fix my specific problem, I suggest the following rules. The outcome agrees with the Style Guide from the University of Oxford.

1)
U+00B4 (ACUTE ACCENT) with no space on the right AND space or line-feed on the left to be replaced with U+2018 (LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK).

2)
U+00A8 (DIAERESIS) with no space on the right AND space or line-feed on the left to be replaced with U+201C (LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK).

3)
U+00B4 (ACUTE ACCENT) with no space on the left AND space or end-of-line on the right to be replaced with U+2019 (RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK).

4)
U+00A8 (DIAERESIS) with no space on the left AND space or end-of-line on the right to be replaced with U+201D (RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK).

5)
U+00B4 (ACUTE ACCENT) between letters (no matter if upper or lower case) or numbers or a combination of letter or number to be replaced with U+2019 (RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK)

Thanks, cheers,

Simon

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