Quotes

S

Stefan

When I write a new mail in Entourage 2004, it always inserts "smart"
quotes instead of "plain" ones. I didn't find a way to avoid this, even
cut and paste from another program doesn't work. As I heard, this
doesn't happen in English systems, but I run a German one. Is there a
way (a dirty hack is fine if there's no "clean" way) to avoid this?

Oh, and yes, I'm writing mails as plain text mails. The setting
concerning quotes is for HTML mails only.

Entourage 2004 (latest update, i.e. 11.1.1), German
OS 10.4.2, Swiss German

Stefan
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

When I write a new mail in Entourage 2004, it always inserts "smart"
quotes instead of "plain" ones. I didn't find a way to avoid this, even
cut and paste from another program doesn't work. As I heard, this
doesn't happen in English systems, but I run a German one. Is there a
way (a dirty hack is fine if there's no "clean" way) to avoid this?

Oh, and yes, I'm writing mails as plain text mails. The setting
concerning quotes is for HTML mails only.
Click to expand...
Entourage 2004 (latest update, i.e. 11.1.1), German
OS 10.4.2, Swiss German
Click to expand...

You've used Mozilla to send this news post. How about you send a reply from
Entourage so we can see for ourselves? You'll find the Microsoft News Server
in your Folder List, near the bottom. Click on it, accept the download list
of news groups, then enter ".mac.office" (no quotes) in the little text
filter box at upper right of main window. (Make sure you enter it in that
order.) Select the microsoft,public.mac.office.entourage newsgroup and any
others you might want (word, etc.) then click the Subscribe button. Then
click on the entourage newsgroup you'll now find in the Folder List under
the News Server and find this news message from me. Send a reply including
quotes.

You are correct that the setting for "smart quotes" applies only to HTML
messages. Straight quotes should never be converted to curly quotes in plain
text messages. I can imagine only one of two things happening:

1) You are using an Input Keyboard (not the standard German keyboard) which
assigns curly quotes to two of the keys on the keyboard, and that's what
you're using. But then you'd see it elsewhere than in Entourage, which
doesn't seem to be the case. (Also, if you aren't consciously using opening
and closing curly quotes, they'd all be coming out in the same direction.) I
expect we can rule this out.

2) The quotes aren't actually being sent curly from your computer or
Entourage, but get changed to curly by people replying to your messages,
probably from Windows computers. This could happen because several of the
characters you use in German - ß, ü, etc. - are non-7 bit ASCII and would be
using a different encoding, usually ISO-8859-1, but Windows computers
sometimes use curly quotes.

Anyway, I'd like to see a straight message from you containing quotes, and
then also an attached message that has the problem.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
S

Stefan

Paul said:
You've used Mozilla to send this news post.
Click to expand...

Yep. Netscape, to be exact. That's because from all the news readers
I've known, Netscape is the one I hate the least.
How about you send a reply from
Entourage so we can see for ourselves?
Click to expand...

You don't believe me? Grrr.... :-/

But I've took a second look at it and discovered: Entourage doesn't
actually substitute the quotes. It just *displays* them substituted.
This happens with received mails, too. Copy and paste them in a
different application shows them straight again.

So while it is fine that Entourage doesn't send curly quotes, it is
still annoying to have it display different characters than it sends.

Weird. How can I get rid of that?

Stefan
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

Yep. Netscape, to be exact. That's because from all the news readers
I've known, Netscape is the one I hate the least.


You don't believe me? Grrr.... :-/
Click to expand...

I believe you, but I wanted to see the message Source to inspect character
set, content-type headings, etc., to experiment with changing the displayed
character set, and to select the text and paste it into other programs. Grrr
yourself ;-) How do you expect anyone to help solve a problem no one has
seen before unless the problem can be replicated and tested? Just guessing?

I'd still like you to do this and include a paragraph typed with your Swiss
German settings that include some non-ASCII characters like ß and ü. I want
to see which character format it is sent with by Entourage (don't choose
anything special, just let it happen normally). Maybe include a short mail
attachment also which has the problem. Send it from Entourage, not Netscape.
But I've took a second look at it and discovered: Entourage doesn't
actually substitute the quotes. It just *displays* them substituted.
This happens with received mails, too. Copy and paste them in a
different application shows them straight again.

So while it is fine that Entourage doesn't send curly quotes, it is
still annoying to have it display different characters than it sends.
Click to expand...

Experiment with System Preferences/International/Input. Choose to display
German as well as Swiss German keyboard. Then you'll see both flags (as
well, I guess, as one of the English language flags you might use sometimes)
in the Input menu at the right of your main menu bar. Also select the
Keyboard Viewer, so you can check out what might be different key in German
from Swiss German if you need to.

With the Input Keyboard set to German rather than Swiss German in Entourage,
is there any change? Probably not, since you say it's a display issue rather
than am input issue.

Now, experiment in System Preferences/International/Language. If you're in
OS 10.4.2, you'll notice there's a difference (unless perhaps this came in
with 10.4): instead of the long lists, you may see just one language. What
is it? in any case, edit the list so you have Deutsch and well as Schweizer
Deutsch (and English or anything else you want). If you've had Schweizer
Deutsch as top (or only) language, switch it to Deutsch, quit apps, log out
and in, launch Entourage. Do you see the same problem still? Or if the
opposite, switch the other way.
Weird. How can I get rid of that?
Click to expand...

I recall way back in OS 10.2 or so (maybe 10.3.0), there was a problem just
with Swiss German. Maybe it's back in 10.4.2.


--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
S

Stefan

Paul said:
I recall way back in OS 10.2 or so (maybe 10.3.0), there was a problem just
with Swiss German. Maybe it's back in 10.4.2.
Click to expand...

The thousands-delimiter in Swiss German is a straight apostrophe
(10'000). This setting (in 10.3.x) prevented the calendar in Entourage
to display the minutes! You could change the minutes by clicking the
arrows, but they were not displayed! Really wierd, as there was no
obvious connection. My trick was to change the delimiter to a curly
apostrophe (10’000), which solved the problem and as an additional bonus
is typographically more correct. The system itself however had
difficulties with that settinig, it made the file size display in the
info window somewhat strange.

Based on this experienced, it was my plan to experiment with those
settings. I just thought that maybe it's a known problem with a known
solution. And the fact that the manual setting of the number format has
been removed in 10.4 (can't believe it!), doesn't make experimenting
more easy.

Stefan
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

The thousands-delimiter in Swiss German is a straight apostrophe
(10'000). This setting (in 10.3.x) prevented the calendar in Entourage
to display the minutes! You could change the minutes by clicking the
arrows, but they were not displayed! Really wierd, as there was no
obvious connection. My trick was to change the delimiter to a curly
apostrophe (10¹000), which solved the problem and as an additional bonus
is typographically more correct. The system itself however had
difficulties with that settinig, it made the file size display in the
info window somewhat strange.
Click to expand...

It sounds to me as if somehow your workaround has been extrapolated to
quotes everywhere, not just in large numbers. In 10.4 the thousands
separator must be back to ' if you have German/Switzerland set? And try
changing to German.
Based on this experienced, it was my plan to experiment with those
settings. I just thought that maybe it's a known problem with a known
solution. And the fact that the manual setting of the number format has
been removed in 10.4 (can't believe it!), doesn't make experimenting
more easy.
Click to expand...

That is rather amazing. It may correlate to important things that are
assumed by the system depending on your location, but it's pretty amazing
that even setting the whole International Formats to "Custom" still doesn't
allow you to customize Number formats: they stay at the US Settings (at
least here - it may depend on your OS). I wonder if this is a bug. In your
case the separator should show as ' now.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
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