Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 August 25

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August 25

Curly quote marks

I want to do a search&replace to change double curly quote marks to straight ones in the wikitext on the edit page of Wikipedia article. (Curly quote marks cause problems sometimes.) I have Windows 7 and my Toshiba laptop keyboard does not have curly quote marks, and I cannot form them by pressing Alt+0145, etc on the numerical keypad; I can only form them using the code &(plus)rdquo; and &(plus)ldquo;. (Ignore "plus" - "nowiki" is ineffective to stop the code converting here.) &(plus)#8221; does not work either. I tried using search&replace on the Advanced ribbon at the top of the edit page with the rdquo code, but it doesn't work (as I expected). Is there any other way I can find the curly quote marks in the edit text? --P123ct1 (talk) 09:46, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

If you find them in the text, you could try copying them and pasting them into the search field where you need them. I often do this for the ¢ symbol since I can never remember the code for it. Dismas|^(talk) 10:53, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I have done it that way. --P123ct1 (talk) 12:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

If you don't mind an overkill solution, you can make and run an autohotkey script in the background and assign a keyboard shortcut to create the curly quotes. This page, http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/Send.htm, covers the send command, it's fairly straightforward from there if you're familiar with programming - if not, I can help you put something together on my talk page, if you'd like. But, like I said, unless you are using these all the time, this may be overkill.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 15:43, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

What problems do curly quote marks cause? Your laptop keyboard almost certainly has some way to enable a numeric keypad overlay, which you could use to enter the keypad codes, though not very conveniently. If you're on Windows, you can use the Character Map utility: press Alt+V to enable Advanced view, Alt+E to Search, type "quotation" or just "quo" in the search box, press Enter, and double-click on the appropriate symbol, which will be automatically copied to the clipboard. View the source of my reply to see how to write ” and the like in wikitext. Years ago I wrote an AutoHotkey script to generate non-ASCII characters from ASCII character sequences that I could remember easily, which I'll paste below for anyone who's interested. -- BenRG (talk) 17:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Phoenixia1177: Thanks, I will look at that, but really I don't have to do this often enough to justify that solution. BenRG : Yes, that is what I was looking for. I haven't had Word 7 for long and haven't found my way around it yet. I still mourn the passing of XP Professional, which was so user-friendly. The curly quote marks can cause tremendous problems with footnotes, as I found out to my cost earlier today - [1] You will see from this why I wanted to find a simple way of getting rid of them! --P123ct1 (talk) 01:01, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

AutoHotkey script

#a:: InputBox, Code, Unicode input, , , 160, 100 if ErrorLevel return if (Code == "") { Run, %A_WinDir%\System32\charmap.exe return } FileRead, Haystack, *P65001 %A_ScriptDir%\UnicodeKeys.utf.txt Code = [%Code%] Pos := Instr(Haystack, Code, true) if (Pos == 0) { MsgBox, Not found return } RegExMatch(Haystack, "[^\[\s]*", Ch, Pos + StrLen(Code)) SendInput %Ch% return The hotkey is Win+A (#a), which you can replace with whatever you want. The UnicodeKeys.utf.txt needs to be in the same directory as the script, and must be UTF-8 encoded (it's an option in Notepad's "Save as" dialog). Here's part of mine: [-a]ā ['a]á [`a]à [^a]â [:a]ä [oa]å [~a]ã [-A]Ā ['A]Á [`A]À [^A] [:A]Ä [OA]Å [~A]à [-e]ē ['e]é [`e]è [^e]ê [:e]ë [ae]æ [oe]œ [-E]Ē ['E]É [`E]È [^E]Ê [:E]Ë [AE]Æ [OE]Œ [-i]ī ['i]í [`i]ì [^i]î [:i]ï [-I]Ī ['I]Í [`I]Ì [^I]Î [:I]Ï [-o]ō ['o]ó [`o]ò [^o]ô [:o]ö [~o]õ [-O]Ō ['O]Ó [`O]Ò [^O]Ô [:O]Ö [~O]Õ [-u]ū ['u]ú [`u]ù [^u]û [:u]ü [-U]Ū ['U]Ú [`U]Ù [^U]Û [:U]Ü [eth]ð [thorn]þ [,c]ç [~n]ñ [ss]ß [Eth]Ð [Thorn]Þ [,C]Ç [~N]Ñ [ e]ɛ [ i]ɪ [ o]ɔ [ u]ʊ [sh]ʃ [v]ʌ [zh]ʒ [neg]¬ [A]∀ [E]∃ [!E]∄ [o]° [deg]° [degree]° [2]² [3]³ [^n]ⁿ [pm]± [mp]∓ [-]− [x]× [times]× [div]÷ [.]· [sqrt]√ [1/4]¼ [1/2]½ [3/4]¾ [1/3]⅓ [2/3]⅔ [1/8]⅛ [3/8]⅜ [5/8]⅝ [7/8]⅞ [inf]∞ [infty]∞ [cap]∩ [cup]∪ [sqcup]⊔ [in]∊ [notin]∉ [~]≈ [approx]≈ [ne]≠ [!=]≠ [/=]≠ [<=]≤ [>=]≥ [===]≡ [cong]≅ [del]∂ [partial]∂ [nabla]∇ [int]∫ [integral]∫ [_0]₀ [_1]₁ [_2]₂ [_3]₃ [_i]ᵢ [_o]ₒ [Gamma]Γ [Delta]Δ [Theta]Θ [Lambda]Λ [Xi]Ξ [Pi]Π [Sigma]Σ [Phi]Φ [Psi]Ψ [Omega]Ω [alpha]α [beta]β [gamma]γ [gam]γ [delta]δ [epsilon]ε [eps]ε [eps2]ϵ [zeta]ζ [eta]η [theta]θ [th]θ [iota]ι [kappa]κ [lambda]λ [lam]λ [mu]μ [nu]ν [xi]ξ [pi]π [rho]ρ [sigma]σ [tau]τ [phi]φ [chi]χ [psi]ψ [omega]ω [om]ω [aleph]ℵ [u]µ [micro]µ [ohm]Ω [hbar]ħ [ell]ℓ [otimes]⊗ [ox]⊗ [oplus]⊕ [o+]⊕ [--]– [---]— [`]‘ [']’ [``]“ ['']” [...]… [cdots]⋯ [cent]¢ [lb]£ [pound]£ [euro]€ [yen]¥ [sec]§ [section]§ [copy]© [copyright]© [par]¶ [para]¶ [tm]™ [TM]™ [dag]† [dagger]† [ddag]‡ [ddagger]‡ [bullet]• [<-]← [->]→ [^-]↑ [v-]↓ [<->]↔ [=>]⇒ [<=>]⇔ [|->]↦ [mapsto]↦

Haven&t you ever seen problems with character encoding of non-ASCII characters? I?ll admit that I don't know how/why it&rsquos a problem, but it□s fairly common in my experience :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SemanticMantis (talk • contribs)

In some applications sure, but Wikipedia and all major browsers have supported Unicode for ages. But P123ct1 was talking about quotes in HTML syntax, which makes sense. -- BenRG (talk) 04:16, 26 August 2014 (UTC)