roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (06/01/91)
I don't know if this can really be classified as a bug, but it
certainly violates the principle of least astonishment. Microsoft Word 4.0
for the Macintosh has a neat feature called "smart quotes". If you type an
ascii quote (") it is automagically turned into the appropriate directed
quote (`` or '') depending on whether it is preceeded by a space or not.
This is not foolproof, but it's a heuristic that works well enough to be
useful.
Anyway, the other day I was proofreading a document when I
discovered a whole passage where the normal ascii quotes appeared. I must
have either had smart quotes turned off when I typed it in, or imported it
from a text file. No problem, I'll just use the Change command to delete
every " in the section and replace it with a ". To my surprise, it didn't
do anything! Going up to each " in turn and doing 'delete, "' worked fine
to get the smart directed quotes in there, however.
It seems to me that the effect of a Change should be exactly as if
you had selected the "From" text, did "Clear", and then typed in the "To"
text, including smart quote processing, but it's apparantly not. Is this a
bug or a feature?
--
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy
"Arcane? Did you say arcane? It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"