Re: Entering quotation marks (derives from Re: proposal for a "Standard-Exit" or "Namespace" character)

From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Tue Apr 14 2009 - 14:14:40 CDT

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    William_J_G Overington wrote:

    > One simply does a copy from the pdf to the clipboard of the character
    > that it is desired to use and then a paste to the document that is
    > being prepared and then one formats to the desired font and point
    > size.

    Using copy and paste is OK for casual needs of entering characters, but why
    would you do such clumsy methods for something as common as normal
    punctuation? I have (half-seriously) coined a law on entering Unicode
    characters: There Is Always A Simpler Way. If you need something very often,
    you should take some trouble in making it easy. That is, invest some time to
    save time in the future.

    For example, you could define (or ask someone define for you) a keyboard
    settings where the key with the " character produces “ when used as such
    and ” when used with AltGr key. Or something like that. Similarly, you could
    replace the underline _ (which is rarely needed in normal prose) by the en
    dash –. When you write computer code where the Ascii " is needed, you simply
    switch to “normal” keyboard settings (e.g., Ctrl+something).

    Alternatively, use a text processing program that automatically converts "
    on keyboard input into language-specific quotation marks. Actually, many
    people use that approach without knowing (though they often have wrong
    language settings and consequently get wrong quotation marks, but that can
    be fixed).

    -- 
    Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ 
    


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