MS Word -- Smart Quotes Query

Anyone know how to query the CRX for "smart quotes" that come in through a copy and paste in MS Word? Examples: “ ” ’
I thought this would be easy through CRXDE Lite but I might have to actually write code.

I am afraid that Jan is right.
And this might be a bit of a hassle, since it might affect your forms. If you are using some standard Windows lettertype in your forms, though, you should be OK.
Bare in mind, that you the NLS_LANG.characterset will have to be compatible between database and forms (the latter at both compiletime and runtime).
Good Luck!
Remco

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Microsoft Word "Smart Quotes"

I hope this will save other developers some time.
This may be obvious to others, but I just spent several hours Googling and testing to determine what actually happens when a user copies text containing "Smart Quotes" from Microsoft Word into a Java JTextComponent. For those not familiar with Smart Quotes, by default, MS Word changes double-quoted strings from using the US-ASCII character for quote (0x22) into left- and right- curly quotes (UTF-16: 0x201c and 0x201d). Word also does this with serveral other characters. This plays havoc with the display and Java Strings later encoded with java.beans.XMLEncoder, unless treated carefully. Here is what I discovered (obviously, this applies to MS Windows):
All values are in hexadecimal.
- Word is storing the character for double quote as UTF-16 internally (201C).
- When the character is copied to the clipboard, it is copied as UTF-8 (E2 80 9C).
- When the clipboard is pasted into Java, Java is assuming the it was originally Windows-1252 encoded, because that is the default for the US-EN locale in Windows XP (probably also Vista, but I only tested in XP).
- Java translates this into a-circumflex, euro-sign, o-e-ligature, the characters corresponding to E2, 80, and 9C respectively in Windows-1252 and represents it internally in UTF-16 as 00E2 20AC 0153.
-When the String is XML-encoded using java.beans.XMLEncoder, it is written in UTF-8 as C3A2 E282AC C593, which equates to UTF-16 00E2 20AC 0153 -- the characters a-circumflex, euro-sign, o-e-ligature.
I am not sure how to fix this, but maybe another reader does. I am experimenting with the Clipboard (java.awt.datatransfer) to see if I can programmatically find out the original character encoding (in this case, UTF-16).

Doesn't the DataFlavor contain the character encoding? What is the content of the InputStream returned by
            InputStream is = (InputStream)contents.getTransferData(DataFlavor.getTextPlainUnicodeFlavor());
If I use
                DataFlavor df = DataFlavor.getTextPlainUnicodeFlavor();
                String mimeType = df.getMimeType();
                String encoding = mimeType.replaceAll(".*?charset=(.*?)\\s*$", "$1");
                InputStream is = (InputStream) contents.getTransferData(df);
                ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
                byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
                for (int count = 0; (count = is.read(buffer)) != -1;)
                    baos.write(buffer, 0, count);
                baos.close();
                result = baos.toString(encoding);to transfer
Hello "World"
which Word changes the quotes to the smart 'smart quotes' version I get as a result
Hello World
which is what I expect.
Am I missing something?
Edited by: sabre150 on Sep 4, 2009 1:27 PM

MS Word smart quotes don't paste the same into Forms 10g as Forms 6i

Hi all,
I have users who write text in Microsoft Word and then cut-and-paste it into Oracle Forms.
After some prodding by the developers, the users have switched to using the 10G version of their application instead of the 6i version.
As a background you should know that Microsoft Word uses Smart Quotes by default, which you can turn off. Smart Quotes are different ascii characters than the ascii 39 single quote and ascii 34 double quote.
When the users cut-and-paste the Microsoft Word text into the Forms 10G field, the single apostrophe smart quote does not convert to ascii 39. I wouldn't be surprised about this except that in Forms 6i the form does convert the single apostrophe smart quote into ascii 39.
So if the users use the 6i Form they can cut-and-paste and the form/database has the character as ascii 39. If the users paste into Forms 10G then the database shows the character as ascii 191 (hex 0xBF), which is an inverted question mark.
Does anyone know of any settings in Forms 10g to revert back to 6i functionality for this?
Thanks much,
Troy

I am afraid that Jan is right.
And this might be a bit of a hassle, since it might affect your forms. If you are using some standard Windows lettertype in your forms, though, you should be OK.
Bare in mind, that you the NLS_LANG.characterset will have to be compatible between database and forms (the latter at both compiletime and runtime).
Good Luck!
Remco

"Smart Quotes" and Extensions

I'm working on a text processing extension and want to implement a "Convert special characters to safe HTML entities" (that's just a working title!) menu option. When I copy and paste some blocks of text from Word into the editor, then right-click my selection and choose my extension to process that text, the text that gets sent via the xml packet to my handler converts (in this case) Word's smart quotes (&#8220 and &#8221) to question marks. This is before my handler processes anything. I'm just using cfdump to look at the data. Am I missing some intermediary processing that needs to be done somehow? I can't figure out where it would be done since I don't have any control over the selected editor content until my handler is fired.
Thanks!
Andy

The encoding is utf-8 (which is the default in CF 9 (and maybe CF 8 too), but I explicitly set it anyway, and still no luck. It seems like Word Smart Quotes are actually seen by ColdFusion as 3 different characters. I don't know that Smart Quotes are actually representable as specific entities, though. When I copy a closing smart quote out of Word into a cfm file and so something like <cset q = "{smart quote here}">, and then loop over that variable one character at a time and output the ascii values, I get 3 values: 226, 8364, 65533.
Here's a test that contains Smart Quotes that I just copied from MS Word into this editor, it will be interesting to see how they are represented after I post this message:
“Test”
Andy

Converting MS-WORD characters such as smart quotes into standard quotes

Hi,
This is a problem when taking text from a MS Word file and pasting it into a browser editor. The Java code doesnt interpret these smart quotes correctly.
Any ideas on how to convert these to standard characters that can be understood by Java
Regards
Chris

sorry what i meant was an application called MorelloNot a web application, then? Doesn't run in a browser?
If so, then where does Java come into this? Is Morello written in Java, or do you have a Java application that is interfacing with Morello in some unspecified way? And where does the console come into it? You said that people were pasting text into Morello, so surely it isn't console-based?
You clearly have an encoding problem but from your description it's impossible to tell where it arises or what you can do to fix it.

Smart quotes driving me slightly nuts

I get copy sent in word documents. I've just moved my workflow from illustrator to indesign to speed things up.
The font I use apparently does not contain the glyph for the smart quotes. When I paste into indesign I get little square boxes where the apostrophes and quotation marks should be.
Now illustrator bless its cotton socks, replaces the fonts missing glyph with Myriad. Indesign does not. I cant turn off the smart quotes in word because they are replaced as they are entered. It makes no sense to me that illustrator is better at this than indesign.
I am now committed to indesign and to this font. But I'm not going to save any time if I have to manually replace apostrophes and quotation marks.
Any ideas?

Any ideas?
1) Preprocessing in Word - use a Word document template with the autocorrect straight-quotes-to-typographer's-quotes turned off, and then Find all quotes and Replace with quotes in your font. Incidentally, that's why quotes are replaced as they are entered in Word - it's one of the autocorrect/autoformat as you type/auto-interfere-with-your-working-method settings. (Blech.)
2) Find/Change in InDesign - first Find any double quotes (") and replace with straight quotes (^") then do the same for single quotes (' to ^') if necessary. This can be automated, or at least you can reduce the number of clicks, in a few ways - by scripting or by saving the query at the top of the Find/Change window.
3) Scott suggests GREP styles - that'd be the fastest way to do it, assuming you're using a version of InDesign new enough to include GREP styles, and that you know how to grep.

Preview and "Smart" quotes

I am trying to search through a PDF document that contains some (unfortunately named) "smart quotes". The term I am searching for is "Dean's", however the document contains "Dean’s". The quote mark in the second word is actually a multibyte Unicode character.
Is there a way to configure Preview, or the Mac in general, to ignore these differences when performing searches? That is, to find "Dean’s" even when I'm looking for "Dean's"? As a human, there's essentially no difference between the two.

Is there a way to configure Preview, or the Mac in general, to ignore these differences when performing searches?
I think not, they represent two different character streams. You probably need to search for both if you don't already know which of them the text uses.
But some apps may do this automatically. I think Pages, for example, may find both kinds of punctuation when you put either in the Edit > Find dialogue.

Convert smart quotes and other high ascii characters to HTML

I'd like to set up Dreamweaver CS4 Mac to automatically convert smart quotes and other high ASCII characters (m-dashes, accent marks, etc.) pasted from MS Word into HTML code. Dreamweaver 8 used to do this by default, but I can't find a way to set up a similar auto-conversion in CS 4. Is this possible? If not, it really should be a preference option. I code a lot of HTML emails and it is very time consuming to convert every curly quote and dash.
Thanks,
Robert
Digital Arts

I too am having a related problem with Dreamweaver CS5 (running under Windows XP), having just upgraded from CS4 (which works fine for me) this week.
In my case, I like to convert to typographic quotes etc. in my text editor, where I can use macros I've written to speed the conversion process. So my preferred method is to key in typographic letters & symbols by hand (using ALT + ASCII key codes typed in on the numeric keypad) in my text editor, and then I copy and paste my *plain* ASCII text (no formatting other than line feeds & carriage returns) into DW's DESIGN view. DW displays my high-ASCII characters just fine in DESIGN view, and writes the proper HTML code for the character into the source code (which is where I mostly work in DW).
I've been doing it this way for years (first with GoLive, and then with DW CS4) and never encountered any problems until this week, when I upgraded to DW CS5.
But the problem I'm having may be somewhat different than what others have complained of here.
In my case, some high-ASCII (above 128) characters convert to HTML just fine, while others do not.
E.g., en and em dashes in my cut-and-paste text show as such in DESIGN mode, and the right entries
    –
    —
turn up in the source code. Same is true for the ampersand
    &
and the copyright symbol
    ©
and for such foreign letters as the e with acute accent (ALT+0233)
    é
What does NOT display or code correctly are the typographic quotes. E.g., when I paste in (or special paste; it doesn't seem to make any difference which I use for this) text with typographic double quotes (ALT+0147 for open quote mark and ALT+0148 for close quote mark), which should appear in source code as
    “[...]”
DW strips out the ASCII encoding, displaying the inch marks in DESIGN mode, and putting this
    "[...]"
in my source code.
The typographic apostrophe (ALT+0146) is treated differently still. The text I copy & paste into DW should appear as
    [...]’[...]
in the source code, but instead I get the foot mark (both in DESIGN and CODE views):
I've tried adjusting the various DW settings for "encoding"
    MODIFY > PAGE PROPERTIES > TITLE/ENCODING > Encoding:
and for fonts
    EDIT > PREFERENCES > FONTS
but switching from "Unicode (UTF-8)" to "Western European" hasn't solved the problem (probably because in my case many of the higher ASCII characters convert just fine). So I don't think it's the encoding scheme I use that's the problem.
Whatever the problem is, it's caused me enough headaches and time lost troubleshooting that I'm planning to revert to CS4 as soon as I post this.
Deborah

Problem with javascript/PHP/ oracle 10g smart quotes

I have a problem with my php form that passes the text field to a javascript object. When I copy text from MS Word that includes smart quotes, the form inputs that into the database as ? (upside down) marks. The charset of the DB is WE8MSWIN1252. How do I store these smart quotes as regular quotes? And also if I can do any conversions on the front end (js or php). I tried doing some conversion but to no avail. Any help would be appreciated thank you. “double”

Decide if you want your HTML pages in Windows code page 1252 or Unicode UTF-8. Then, make sure the pages are properly tagged as either "text/html;charset=windows-1252" or "text/html;charset=utf-8". Use HTTP header Content-type or the corresponding <META HTTP-EQUIV=...> tag. Then, set NLS_LANG environment variable for your PHP engine to either AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8MSWIN1252 or to AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8, depending on which encoding you selected for your HTML.
-- Sergiusz

Auto-smart quotes in Mountain Lion.

Being kind of a weirdo, one huge draw to OS X for a long while now has been its ability to automatically turn dumb quotes into smart quotes.
That is,
" " into “ ” .
Just a bit of a typographical quirk I have.
Anyway, since getting Mountain Lion, this function simply doesn't work as it should. When it is simply enabled in the [edit > substitutions] menu, nothing happens. So, I found out, that when you go into the [edit > show substitutions] menu, you can get it to work if you have 'text replacement' checked. However, with one monstrous caveat: after the quotes get changed to smart ones, weird stuff starts to happen. In contractions, the cursor will move to the letter directly adjacent to the new smart quote. E.g. in the word I've, the cursor will move between the v and e after you hit the spacebar; in the word don't, it'll move next to the t.
In essence, it makes the function totally useless because it turns typing into a total hassle. I swear it didn't do this in one of the earlier versions of 10.8, but it sure does now. Perhaps someone knows of a way to fix this? Or is it simply a bug that slipped through the cracks because it's a pretty esoteric feature?
I guess the only other option is to stop being so ridiculous, but now why would I want to do that?

I, too, am having the same problem – except I am using Lion (10.7.5). If I remember correctly, this was a problem even in 10.7.4. Totally aggravating for us weirdos. I just can’t tell if the problem has to do with Safari (or other applications) or whether it is an operating-system-wide setting/problem. I have tried a few different trouble-shoots – combinations of the “System Preferences” panel and “Substitutions” from within Safari – but all to no avail.

German smart quotes on English UI

Hi,
I need to write German letters on my MacBook Air, whose language settings are set to English (US). The problem is that even when spell check is set to German, the smart quotes still appear as the should in the English language. I originally was a Windows user and when I use MS Word to type, it automatically detects document language and formats text accordingly. The following is what shows up when I use Word on Windows:
„Guten Morgen“, sagte der Bäcker.
“Good morning”, said the baker.
When I use any writing software on Mac, though, it shows up like this (and even in retrospect, there doesn't seem to be a way to change it):
“Guten Morgen”, sagte der Bäcker.
“Good morning”, said the baker.
I understand that in OS X, software-specific language settings depend on the system language. Coming from Windows, I'm surprised that there is no way to set document language in OS X. Or is there?
What do I need to do to type a German letter, complete with all German symbols, but without having to switch system language every time? I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem, but I could not find any good ideas on how to solve my problem. I hope you can help me.
Best wishes.
Nils

How about an OS X service that works in any application, and will place Gänsefüßchen around any selected text string. What if you selected the text, and then pressed control+Q, and the quotes were inserted around the selected text? You may also find this a useful tool.
Open Automator, New Document, and Service.
In the left Automator panel select Library > Utilities > Run AppleScript.
Drag and drop the Run AppleScript action into the larger workflow window to the right.
Select and remove the contents of that Run AppleScript window.
Copy/Paste the AppleScript code from below into the Run AppleScript window
Click the hammer in the Run AppleScript toolbar
Service receives text from any application
Output replaces selected text
Automator > File > Save...
Give your script a meaningful name. I called mine Gänsefüßchen.
It is written into your <login>/Library/Services folder
In System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services
Scroll down in the right window until your assigned service name appears
On the right side where it says none, click once, and it will change to an add shortcut button.
Type control and Q which will appear as ^Q. Press return. Exit System Preferences.
Exit any running application where you might use this. Then restart the application.
With your text selected, press control+Q to get the Gänsefüßchen.This service item appears under Application Name > Services too.
Automator Service Gänsefüßchen
AppleScript code
on run {input, parameters}
-- we want to insert german quotes around the selected text
tell application "System Events"
set links_zitat to "„"
set recht_zitat to "”"
set german_quotes to ""
set german_quotes to links_zitat & input & recht_zitat
set input to german_quotes
end tell
return input
end run

CF 7.02 Access Encoding and Smart Quotes

The latest version of ColdfFusion with the updater applied
(7,0,2,142559 ) does not properly handle smart quotes pasted from
MS Word using UTF-8 as the charset. This worked on CF7 pre updater
and CF 6. Is anyone aware of a fix for this ?

France19 wrote:
> The latest version of ColdfFusion with the updater
applied (7,0,2,142559 ) does
> not properly handle smart quotes pasted from MS Word
using UTF-8 as the
> charset. This worked on CF7 pre updater and CF 6. Is
anyone aware of a fix for
> this ?
sure? i thought you had to use access for unicode to get
unicode support in access.

Smart quotes messed up from ipad

question: it appears that in the round trips between pages osx and pages ipad, anything entered with apostrophe's or quote marks on the ipad does not use curly quotes (smart quotes). is there a simple way to globally change all marks in the file to the smart kind on the computer, and is there a way to get smart quote marks from ipad entered text?

i do understand how to set the preference on the laptop, but that doesn't change the straight quotes that already were entered back to curly, unless i go and delete each mark and reenter it.
i don't see any preference pane for the ipad version of pages to control smart quotes; the global preference for 'auto correction' might control smart quotes on the ipad, but that would be unworkable, since i routinely use words it doesn't recognize (languages not english, and just unusual english words). hopefully there is another way, or will be soon...

Smart quotes not working in Pages 5.5.2

I'm unable to get smart quotes in Pages.
I'm on a 2009 iMac, using Yosemite 10.10.1, Pages 5.5.2
I've followed the instructions on Apple's page (http://help.apple.com/pages/mac/5.0/#/tanad45f9cce) to make all quotes smart quotes in my document and it didn't work.
When I opened Substitutions in Pages the box for smart quotes was ticked, unticking and reticking and doing 'replace all' made no difference.
Prior to this I'd just changed the font style setting for the document from Courier New to Times New Roman.
I've also checked in System Prefs/Keyboard/Text where 'Use smart quotes' is ticked.
I'm formatting a book, this is holding up production of my book as all quotes are non-curly, straight quotes and need to be changed to smart quotes.
I'm wondering whether I shouldn't go back to the previous version of Pages where everything seemed to work, including auto capitalisation.

Additionally re my first post above I've tested for smart quotes in MS Word 2008 and Mail 8.1 and they both support smart quotes. Word also converts between quote types.
I've had to create a workaround to get my Pages document showing smart quotes:
I tested smart quote support in Word by pasting a page from the Pages document into Word and then converting the straight quotes to curly quotes. which worked. I then copied that text and pasted it back into a new blank page in Pages, the smart quotes stayed curly. So, I'm about to copy and paste my whole book, 55,000+ words, into Word and convert quotes and then paste it back into Pages.
It seems like the smart quotes issue is Pages 5.5.2 specific and has been for quite some while.

Turning off Smart quotes?

Does anyone know how to turn off smart quotes in RHX5? I've
posted other questions related to the issue I'm having currently
with double quotes and the copyright sign showing up as ? in the
help files once they been included in a build. No one in my company
seems to know the right solution, so now I'm seeing if I can just
turn off the smart quotes.

Hi Paul,
I think Peter's method is indeed the way to go. For future
reference you can tidy up the word source via the instructions on
this page:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/206165
Cheers
Craig

MS Word -- Smart Quotes Query

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