Smart / curly quotes and apostrophes?

[GrahamvdR]

I’m pleased to see how quickly the text has been improved / fixed with version 1.5.0.4. Text in the first version was practically unusable for me, but now seems fast and stable, so far. I really like the options for leading.

 

I haven’t worked out how to get proper curly apostrophes and quotes (i.e. ‘’“” vs '"). They appear as straight / dumb quotes when I type them. I’ve installed a keyboard layout that allows me to get them in most apps, even in this post, but it doesn’t work in AD. So far the only way I’ve found of getting them into my text is to copy and paste from another app. Is this something I’m missing, a bug, or a feature coming in a future update?

 

Thanks for the super program, quick updates, and great communication through the forum. It’s great to know we’re being heard and things are happening, fast! Well done. Buying into a software suite is about more than the programs themselves − it’s also about the company culture and interaction with users, and support. Affinity has impressed me on all counts. I’m excited about the future.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Curly quotes won't work as in other applications because there's no Autocorrect. Typing Alt + 0147 or Alt + 0148 ought to work, but does not due to a general bug with keyboard input. 

 

Perhaps smart quotes could be added to the Insert Character submenu of the text menu? 

[GrahamvdR]

Thanks for the reply, Bhikkhu Pesala. That seems like a fairly major shortcoming, especially for an app that looks like it wants to take typography seriously. Even when the keyboard input issues are resolved, we shouldn’t need to be using custom keyboard layouts or cumbersome key combinations to insert apostrophes and quotes.

 

Any word from the Affinity team? How is it implemented in the Mac version?

[Mark Ingram]

Any word from the Affinity team? How is it implemented in the Mac version?

 

We're working on text input for the next beta release. You will be able to hold down ALT to insert special characters, such as ALT+2,4,8 to insert the degrees symbol. Also, you'll be able to use AltGr to insert accented letters etc.

Further text input improvements will be made during the beta period. It's something that has to be right for release, so we will get it done :).

[GrahamvdR]

Thanks Mark, good to hear! I hope that proper curly quotes and apostrophes will ultimately be automatically formatted inline and won’t be classed as “special characters” that require complex key strokes (though obviously having that option for when the default glyph is incorrect would be useful).

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

At least, if they were added to the Insert Symbol menu, shortcuts could be assigned to them, but that's rather primitive. This should be better than Notepad. 

[jnewman]

Hi Guys,


Two things I wanna ask :

1) Any way to make the text colorful that falls under quotes ?

or 

2) Any way by which we can highlight the row of the quoted text whenever the mouse hover occurs ?


PS : M not much of a coder.


Thanks!

[jnewman]

Anyone ??

[Mark Ingram]

Anyone ??

 

You only asked the question 15 hours ago! Also, you might have more luck asking in the Questions Forum.

[Alfred]

You only asked the question 15 hours ago! Also, you might have more luck asking in the Questions Forum.

 

In any case, the questions asked are off topic for this thread.

 

I'm not even sure that those questions actually relate to Affinity Designer. The effects described sound more like something you might expect to see on a web page.

[MEB]

Hi jnewman,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Affinity Designer is strictly a design/illustration software. It's not a wysiwyg web editor nor outputs any code.

You can only use it to layout (design) the pages visually without any kind of interactivity (apart from the constraints feature that mostly used for UI/UX).

[jnewman]

Guys, thanks for clearing things up!!

I will take care of it in future!

[Sarvasri]

On the Mac...

It’s possible to insert “” ‘’ curly quotes, apostrophe’s etc. with keyboard combos.

Instead of ' and " you can have ’ and ” or ‘ “ by using keyboard combos.

 

Option + open or close bracket

Option-shift + open or close bracket, (actually open or close brace with the shift key pressed).

 

You can also make separate keybindings of your choice.

See: http://www.danandcheryl.com/2010/08/how-to-type-curly-quotes-in-mac-os-x

 

I, too, would prefer smart quotes. If I have a lot of text to enter, I'll use text edit with smart quotes turned on and copy and paste into Designer or Photo (paste without format). Especially, if I’m using Dragon to dictate -- because I’m not actually typing and I want the smart quotes to appear directly in my dictation.

 

I could also dictate in Designer and search and replace selectively to get my curly quotes.

Hope this helps.

 

I look forward to smart quotes in Designer and Photo so I don't have to fumble with the keyboard...

 

[rubs]

We're working on text input for the next beta release. You will be able to hold down ALT to insert special characters, such as ALT+2,4,8 to insert the degrees symbol. Also, you'll be able to use AltGr to insert accented letters etc.

Further text input improvements will be made during the beta period. It's something that has to be right for release, so we will get it done :).

 

As of version 1.5.2.58, the codes for curly quotes (Alt+147 and Alt+148), plus others (Alt+149 for bullet, Alt+0128 for Euro sign) still don't work. Curiously, though, Alt+150 and Alt+151 do work correctly. So I see the bug is still there, at least partially.