[OS X TeX] howto do smart (double) quotes with texshop

[Ross Moore]

[Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> At 20:03 Uhr +0200 19.06.2002, Patrick Gundlach wrote:
> 
> > My experience is that beginners find this really annoying (e.g. Gr"u"se
> > instead of Gr__e). But this is probably getting off topic?
> 
> Is this still the question "kp gores" has asked in the first place?

You're right; we have indeed strayed.

> I type "Gr__e", although I know that this could cause problems (although I
> do not think it will).
> I also tell every TeX Newbie that he does not have to type '"u' if he wants
> '_', because I would never do this.
> In my opinion this is one of the reason for TeX being known as too
> complicated for a normal user, since many TeX books (Kopka for example)
> describe the '"u' version as standard still today. BTW, the reason Kopka
> gives for using this version is that one could have no german keyboard
> available, which may be true for workstation users but not for almost any
> PC or Mac user in Germany. (Some people (programmers) use a international
> layout because some characters can be obtained more easily here, but that
> is not true for most of the TeX users...)
 
> Nevertheless I would appreciate "smart quotes". This has nothing to do with
> encoding problems, I can type '"' and '"' on my german keyboard with Alt-1
> and Shift-Alt-1.
> The feature Alpha has is that you can type '"' (Shift-1) and the programme
> replaces this by '"' or '"', depending if it is an opening or closing
> quote. (Word does this too, but with some problems...)

Yes again. There can be a difference between what you type
and what goes into the TeX file.
My point is that you want `` and '' to go into the TeX file,
otherwise you are risking incompatibilities across platforms.
This is especially so when there are multiple authors working on the
same document or project.

Editors can be ``smart'' enough to do the conversion, based upon a list
of key-bindings, or whatever.

In the absence of such things, then simply typing the pair of ``appropriate''
single quotes is not a hassle --- at least not on English/US keyboards.
(I don't have sufficient experience of other keyboard arrangements
to comment on those.)


In my experience, while typing shortcuts can be nice, and very easy to use
when you are familiar with what is a shortcut and what is not,
they are like an addiction. If you find yourself using a machine or editor
which does not have your favourite shortcuts, then the withdrawal can be painful.
Thus you will need to know the ``standard'' way anyway.
(Indeed 2 hits on a single key is easier than remembering which pair
of keys need to be hit in combination, then doing it.)

 
> This does not have any effect on the .tex file which is saved, '"' stays '"".
> 
> An option which saves every '_' or '_' as a TeX command which every TeX
> installation in the world can understand was nice, too. But for the moment
> the "smart quotes" feature I have described above was a much greater
> feature for me!
> 
> So, this is a feature request to the TeXShop and iTeXMac people!

By all means, request an addition to the ``editor'',
provided that in the implementation it inserts a correct TeX sequence
and not an encoding-dependent 8-bit character.


Note that smart quotes based upon " and following characters are problematic
for European users:  is  "ange...  meant to be ``ange...  or  \"ange... 
(and for non-European users when you need to include phrases or names, etc.)

All the best,

	Ross



> Best regards,
> Matthias
> -- 
> Matthias Damm <m.damm at web.de>
> PGP key available
> "Ein Optimist, wer unsere Welt f_r die beste aller m_glichen h_lt;
> ein Pessimist, wer f_rchtet, da_ dies stimmt" - James Branch Cabell
> 
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