curly quotes

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Can we get support for curly quotes? Any competent book design will include 
them, but I see no 
support for them in Sigil. This would make it difficult to use Sigil at a 
professional level.

This would be a preference. When typing a single or double quote mark or 
apostrophe into text 
(not code), it would automatically be converted to a right or left mark, as 
appropriate.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by Aa...@aaronshep.com on 5 Mar 2010 at 8:40

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Sigil is not really meant to be used to *write* an epub book, but to edit one. 
It's
not MS Word.

For editing, you can just use Unicode curly quotes, like “so”.

See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark_glyphs#Quotation_marks_in_electronic
_documents

Original comment by Strahinja.Markovic@gmail.com on 5 Mar 2010 at 1:30

• Changed state: WontFix

[GoogleCodeExporter]

In other words, you're telling me Sigil is only for techies, not for general 
users. That's unfortunate, because 
there's a huge demand for an easy-to-use epub editor. Not to mention it's 
encouraging the continued use of 
substandard typography in ebooks.

Original comment by Aa...@aaronshep.com on 5 Mar 2010 at 4:36

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Techies? Not at all. All I said was "use a Unicode curly quote". And I even 
gave you
a direct link to a place where you could read everything about it if you weren't
familiar with the concept.

Lastly, Sigil is not MS Word. Would I like it to have all the feature Word 
does, only
for epub? Of course I would. But both of us have to be realistic: Word is an
application with more than *25 years* of development history, thousands of
programmers working on it full-time and a budget consisting of hundreds of 
millions
of dollars for every iteration.

I can't match that. Nowhere near it; Sigil is a hobby project. So I work on 
features
that I deem are more important. If you want curly quotes, there are many 
different
ways of inputting them in Sigil, from character entities in the Code View to 
simple
pasting of Unicode characters in either View.

But if you want to automatically spell check something in Sigil, you can't. If 
you
want to import an RTF/Mobi/LIT file, you can't. If you want to directly edit 
the OPF
or NCX files, you can't. So these features come first, and a lot of other 
things come
second. Automatic insertion of curly quotes comes nowhere, since it's assumed 
you
used something else to create your initial HTML/EPUB file and now you want to 
edit it
in Sigil. That's what 95% of Sigil's users do. But if you still want to insert 
them,
you can do so with ease: Sigil just won't do it automatically for you.

Why? Because my time is limited, and I thus have to spend it on features that 
both I
and others find more important.

I'm sorry if that makes you unhappy.

Original comment by Strahinja.Markovic@gmail.com on 5 Mar 2010 at 4:53

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Although, now that  you mention it, it would be nice to edit the OPF and NCX 
files :)

Amazon requires a couple little tweaks, including giving the cover a specific 
idref
and linear attribute to the itemrefs in the spine.  If I could edit this 
directly in
Sigil, that'd be perfect! Maybe in a future release?  :-D

Keep up the amazing work!

Original comment by bcmarti...@gmail.com on 5 Mar 2010 at 5:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Yes, in a future release that will be possible.

Original comment by Strahinja.Markovic@gmail.com on 5 Mar 2010 at 5:54

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Given the potential and the need for a product of this type, I'm sorry you see 
it only as a hobby project. You could 
easily make a full-time business out of it and build a company. I think a whole 
lot of people are waiting for a 
competent, easy-to-use epub editor that follows accepted typographic 
conventions. I know I'm waiting for one, in 
part for myself and in part to recommend to the many readers of my books on 
self publishing.

And by the way, it did not take Microsoft 25 years, thousands of programmers, 
or hundreds of millions of dollars to 
include support for curly quotes. In fact, I can't think of a single word 
processing program or publishing-related 
program that doesn't have it -- except Sigil. And that includes plenty of 
programs that are never used for writing 
books. But perhaps such things don't matter to those who grow up attuned to Web 
typography instead of to the 
typography of books.

Original comment by Aa...@aaronshep.com on 6 Mar 2010 at 12:27

[GoogleCodeExporter]

>>And by the way, it did not take Microsoft 25 years, thousands of programmers, 
or
hundreds of millions of dollars to include support for curly quotes.

I was speaking in general. There are plenty of features that Word has and Sigil
doesn't, most of them more important than automatic curly quote insertion.

>>In fact, I can't think of a single word processing program or 
publishing-related 
program that doesn't have it -- except Sigil.

Then you can be the one who hacks QtWebKit contentEditable implementation to 
support
curly quotes. I know it would take me several weeks just to get acquainted with 
the
code base, and then weeks more just to figure out where in the hundreds of 
thousands
of lines of code in that project I should stick that feature in.

So you'll have to excuse me if I don't feel inclined to spend what little spare 
time
I can find to work on Sigil just so you could have automatic insertion of curly 
quotes. 

Because Sigil does support curly quotes. You just have to insert them manually.

In the end, Sigil is open source software, and in the OSS world it's considered 
more
than a slight faux pas to demand that the developers implement anything, since
everything they do, they do in their spare time, for *free*, out of the 
goodness of
their hearts, and you are more than just encouraged to open a code editor and
contribute a patch for a feature you want.

>>But perhaps such things don't matter to those who grow up attuned to Web 
typography
instead of to the typography of books.

As someone who doesn't use word processors for printed documents but hand-tuned 
LaTeX
because of it's superior typography, I find your insinuation that I'm 
typographically
ignorant amusing.

Original comment by Strahinja.Markovic@gmail.com on 6 Mar 2010 at 12:47

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Sorry, didn't mean to be offensive. I was just trying to alert you to an 
opportunity that seems greater than you 
realize. But I won't bother you any more.

I'm sure that Sigil will meet the needs of many, and I thank you for your work 
on it.

Original comment by Aa...@aaronshep.com on 6 Mar 2010 at 1:08

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I understand that you want and care about curly quotes. I do to. I find it 
difficult
to read a printed book that doesn't have them, straight quotes just look ugly.

But Sigil supports curly quotes. Anything you import that has curly quotes, 
will have
them in Sigil as well. When you export your epub book, that will have curly 
quotes too.

Your workflow should be something like using a word processor to write your 
text, and
then export as HTML. Import that into Sigil, do the chapter splitting/other 
editing,
then save as epub.

The word processor has all the niceties for actually writing text, like 
automatic
insertion of curly quotes. Sigil cannot yet focus on those. As you've said, any 
WP
will have these, but no WP can let you edit the epub's OPF or NCX or add Dublin 
Core
metadata or dozens of different things Sigil can.

I have to focus first on filling the gaps in the epub production chain that no 
tool
can yet provide, and then add the other things which you can already do with a
different application. Did you see the comment from dcmartinez? Did you see how
excited he was about direct OPF editing in Sigil? Do you know why?

Because currently he has to do the attribute changes *by hand*. He has to 
disassemble
the epub book with a ZIP unarchiver, edit the OPF with a text editor, carefully
assemble the resulting folder hierarchy back into an epub file and then 
hopefully
check his work with a tool like epubcheck since modifying epub books in this 
way is
very error-prone.

And lots of other people do what he does. They have to, there is no other way. 
But
you *can* insert curly quotes in some other application and then import the 
file into
Sigil.

I hope you understand why his needs and the needs of other people like him have 
to
come before yours, at least in this respect.

Then there's the other problem, that of the QtWebKit library that is 
responsible for
the rendering and editing support in Book View. It's absolutely huge. Doing 
what you
ask would require delving deep into the internals of that project and adding 
new code
to it. I don't know how much you know about programming, but this is a 
*gargantuan*
task because of the size of QtWebKit. While what you ask sounds trivial, it 
would
take at least a month to implement. In that time, I can implement dozens of 
other
features that are honestly just more important than this one.

Please understand that I *want* to do what you are asking me to do, but it's 
just not
currently feasible.

Original comment by Strahinja.Markovic@gmail.com on 6 Mar 2010 at 1:29

[GoogleCodeExporter]

to the original poster : I think you may be missing the point of Sigil. It is 
NOT a 
word-processor. It is an epub editor. You can easily add curly quotes or any 
other 
unicode / html entity characters you want, as Strahinja has explained, however 
it 
won't presume to "correct" your text for you or automatically replace some 
characters with other characters, and I certainly wouldn't want it to, nor I'm 
sure 
would 99.9% of its users. That is not its purpose, and there is no reason for 
it to 
do that. Use Word for that (or the WORD PROCESSING APP of your choice).

What Sigil *does* do, is allow you to easily assemble and edit epub files. That 
is a 
hugely different functionality. And Sigil does that excellently, despite being 
only 
an alpha release of an app coded out of the goodness of his heart, in whatever 
spare 
time he has, for free, by one lone idealist. I think that deserves maximum 
respect 
and appreciation on the part of all of us grateful Sigil users. Thank you, 
Strahinja, for making epub creation SO much easier ! Sigil really is in its own 
class.

Original comment by zeepie.z...@gmail.com on 6 Mar 2010 at 6:07

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Zeepie, apparently you have never used InDesign, Quark, or any other 
professional publishing program. None of these 
programs are word processors or even editors, yet they all will replace 
straight quotes with curly ones with straight ones. 
I don't know where this idea comes from that curly quotes are the province of 
word processors only, but it is simply 
ridiculous.

I have no doubt that 99.9% of Sigil's _current_ users do not care about curly 
quotes, or would even know if they're using 
them or not. I was talking about people who might wish to use Sigil who 
actually have some sense of typography and 
expect their programs to follow standard conventions. If it's too much work to 
support such users, then fine, but please 
don't give me this bull about basic book typography being the exclusive 
province of word processors!

Original comment by Aa...@aaronshep.com on 6 Mar 2010 at 7:18

[GoogleCodeExporter]

At the risk of stating the obvious, Zeepie, let me give the _real_ reason that 
Sigil is not supporting curly quotes. It 
doesn't support book typography because it's built on QTWebKit, which is built 
for Web pages -- not books. 

It doesn't take a word processor to handle curly quotes. Any book design or 
layout program will handle them. 
Even most basic text editors will handle them. But the one kind of editor that 
will _not_ normally handle them is 
a Web page editor! 

Original comment by Aa...@aaronshep.com on 6 Mar 2010 at 9:38

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Actually, I have used Quark, although I far prefer Indesign. However both of 
those 
are for handling print layout, which is not the same process. Sigil is built 
using 
web technology because that is precisely what epub is based on : xhtml and css. 
This 
WILL handle curly quotes and indeed any character available in unicode or as an 
html 
entity. Dreamweaver (which is a web page editor) will also handle them. It just 
won't replace them automatically, which is what you seem to want. But it's very 
simple to add curly quotes : insert the code & ldquo ; (without the spaces) for 
left 
double quotes, & rdquo ; for right quotes, etc.

The point is, however, that the builk of the text editing should be done BEFORE 
it's 
imported into Sigil. Sigil can handle any stylistic / typographical 
modifications 
you want to make, because you can of course do whatever you like to the code. 
If 
curly quotes are already present, they will be preserved, so if you really 
require 
automatic replacement you can easily do that using the text editor of your 
choice. 
But its main purpose is to generate epub files, not prepare text. You're 
confusing 
two different steps in the workflow, as well as apparently not recognising 
functions 
which *do* exist, as has been explained.

I strongly recommend you take a look at the http://www.w3schools.com website 
where 
you can learn about the codes involved in making xhtml files to understand what 
it 
can and can't handle, and learn how to make curly quotes, em and en dashes, non-
breaking spaces, ligatures, etc. for epub production.

Original comment by zeepie.z...@gmail.com on 7 Mar 2010 at 2:01

[GoogleCodeExporter]

By the way, personally I far prefer to insert my punctuation marks manually, 
because 
automatic replacement can lead to mistakes. For instance, if you type 'Tis into 
a 
word processor, the straight ' would be replaced with a left single quote. This 
is 
incorrect, since in fact it should be an apostrophe, or right single quote.

Original comment by zeepie.z...@gmail.com on 7 Mar 2010 at 2:05

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I have been looking to edit and change quotes from straight to curly within the 
document. 

It would be very helpful if the Sigil find&replace function had the option to 
ONLY search the body text. 

For example, searching for ( " ) results in finding all the ( class="item" ) 
entries as well as the body text ( "Saying something" he said. ). This means I 
cannot do a replace all, as it changes the coding. Thanks!

Original comment by thomas.r...@gmail.com on 24 Jun 2013 at 10:55

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Strahinja,
I think you should listen to the users. After all, it is they who *use* the 
software. Implementing curly quotes is trivial and entirely in keeping with the 
design of your application. I did it for my javascript based editor and it took 
about 30 lines of simple code. You don't need a plugin or library. Basically 
all you do is scan the text, which you seem to be doing anyway, for the 
conditions of opening-quote and if that fails then turn it into a close-quote. 
I can't think of any other feature I'd like added to Sigil, except this. That 
won't make it a into Microsoft Word clone. It will just make it more usable for 
its real users.

Original comment by desmond....@gmail.com on 6 Oct 2014 at 10:59

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi, it's really simple using curly quotes in sigil. This is how I do it:

I copied open and closed curly quotes from word into sigil. Then I added them 
as clips using the clip editor (under tools). The shortcuts I use are 'ctrl + 
n' and 'ctrl + m'.

(Go to 'edit' 'preferences' 'keyboard shortcuts' to choose what shortcut keys 
you want to assign.)

Now when I want to type an open curly quote, I simply type 'ctrl + n' instead 
of 'shift + "'. 'ctrl + m' gives me closed quotes.

It takes a tiny bit of getting used to - it took me all of about 5 minutes for 
this to become automatic/instinctive.

There might be better ways, but that's how I do it.

Original comment by doorstep...@gmail.com on 29 Nov 2014 at 10:45