Change straight quotes to typographic quotes

[garrettm30]

Is there a way to quickly change straight single and double quotes to typographical (curly) quotes in a selection of text? I know Publisher will currently change those things when typing, but it does not appear to do so when pasting from another source.

So far, I can only think to run four regex replaces, but as the find/replace is cumbersome for at multiple searches (since we can't currently save searches), I am wondering if there is a better solution. If not, I think it could be a useful feature to add, akin to the various change case operations in the Text->Capitalization menus.

[lacerto]

There could at least be factory search clauses for finding straight single and double quotation marks (similarly as in InDesign), which would be a specific case (so that searching simply by inserting straight double or single quotation mark from the keyboard would search ANY kind of double or single quotation marks). Currently straight double and single quotation marks from the keyboard actually search specifically straight marks also in the text, but this makes it awkardly difficult to check usage of quotes in general. 

Often it is necessary to find erronous quotation marks, which typically means that you need to enter something like Find <space><wrong opening quotation mark> Replace <space><correct opening quotation mark>, and same for the closing quotation mark, so having left and right opening and closing single and double quotation marks as separate choise are less useful. In practice you need to insert exact glyphs (with the space character) to find erroneous usage. 

[lacerto]

To answer the actual question the quickest way might be just typing " in the FInd box (which means search straight double quotation marks) and then typing " from keyboard for each found instance (unfortunately replacing " in find-replace does not apply the auto-correction, not even when replacing with the space character). If you have typographic auto-correction for quotation marks enabled, you'd get language specific curly marks "automatically". Otherwise you need to search for <space>" and replace with language specific double quotation glyph (and do the same for single quotation marks, and closing quotation marks).

But "local aware" regex might give an easy solution -- provided that it is smart enough to automatically apply locale (language specific) opening and closing quotation marks, to avoid typing in specific glyphs? 

EDIT: It is worth a consideration to change the behavior of typing " and ' from the keyboard in Find and Replace boxes. If they meant "any" double or single quotation mark, then you could type in Find box a symbol for straight double quotation mark (e.g. ^", as in InDesign), and in Replace box type simply ". When replacing, language specific typographic quotation marks would be inserted to replace the straight quotes smartly so that opening and closing context is checked without the user needing to type in preceding or trailing spaces (not to mention language specific glyphs). This is how it works in InDesign and it is most often adequate. For more complex things one would need to write a script. 

[jrkay]

As a frequent importer of text from many sources, including from email texts, I have often wished that  this was a feature, I'd certainly like to see it in Publisher.

John

[DL Major]

I would like to see this as well. Like jrkay, I get texts from various people and sources, and there is no consistency about quotes - I get some smart, and some straight. A quick way to replace straight quotes in a body of text would be really helpful.

[Richard786]

+1

[paltri]

+1

[AndyQ]

+1. Converting inch-marks to quotation marks automatically is a massive timesaver, and something even cheesy word processors and presentation apps will do for you. 

[OzFrog]

+1

[Fixx]

But it should do it RIGHT, all too often my quote marks are upside down... basically it should follow language set in text styles.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, Fixx said:

But it should do it RIGHT, all too often my quote marks are upside down... basically it should follow language set in text styles.

If it doesn't, I hope you've reported that as a bug.

[feebee]

Me too please, it's such a pain having to change straight quotes by hand all the time!

[Efvee]

+10 !

[MikeTO]

+1

I think there should be an optional pre-flight warning, too.

[garrettm30]

24 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

+1

I think there should be an optional pre-flight warning, too.

There is: look at the Text Patterns section in preflight. 

[MikeTO]

7 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

There is: look at the Text Patterns section in preflight. 

Oh duh, thanks. I have it on, too.

[PaoloT]

I think the Mac already includes these commands in the Edit > Substitutions menu. At least, I find it unchanged in many text editors. It wouldn't be bad if it was included, as is, at least in the Mac version.

Paolo

 

[garrettm30]

59 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

I think the Mac already includes these commands in the Edit > Substitutions menu. At least, I find it unchanged in many text editors. It wouldn't be bad if it was included, as is, at least in the Mac version.

Paolo

 

Not in Publisher - there is no Edit: Substitutions menu. Instead, the equivalent function in Publisher is handled via the Auto-correct section in Publisher preferences. The problem is that both of these—whether Affinity's solution or Mac default—only replace text as you're typing, but it doesn't work on existing text, such as pasting from elsewhere. That was the point of my original request some time ago. I still would welcome the ability to run that correction on a text selection, but until such time, I have regex.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

but it doesn't work on existing text, such as pasting from elsewhere.

I'm probably not going to play with it, but in theory I think you could use AutoHotKey (on Windows) to copy selected text, delete it, and retype it back into the input field. That should allow Publisher's Autocorrect functions to work on it.

Possibly a similar helper application on Mac could provide equivalent functionality.