chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (12/23/87)
I just ran into something I consider a major misfeature of Hypercard (actually, I consider it a bug, but I'll be nice). If you do a lot of writing, you usually end up relying on one of the various smart quote inits that replace ' and " with the appropriate typeset curly thingies. Hypercard doesn't understand these things. This means that if you're trying to do some work in Hypercard and your word processor at the same time (as I was) you things start getting really confused. Switch into Word, turn on quotes, type something, switch into hypercard (I love multifinder! wow!), turn off quotes, hack, switch.... ad nauseum. ugh. The mac is supposed to be modeless. This is an unneccessary mode switch. All Hypercard has to do is convert <option-shift-[> and <option-[> to " and <option-shift-]> and <option-]> to ' -- a trivial operation for hypercard and a big win for the user. Hey, APPLE! Please put this on the christmas list for the next release! chuq --- Chuq "Fixed in 4.0" Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ
pollock@usfvax2.UUCP (Wayne Pollock) (12/27/87)
In article <37249@sun.uucp> chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >... If you do a lot of >writing, you usually end up relying on one of the various smart quote >inits that replace ' and " with the appropriate typeset curly thingies. > >Hypercard doesn't understand these things. ... Switch into Word, turn on >quotes, type something, switch into hypercard, turn off quotes, hack, switch... >ad nauseum. >ugh. The mac is supposed to be modeless. This is an unneccessary mode >switch. All Hypercard has to do is convert <option-shift-[> and <option-[> >to " and <option-shift-]> and <option-]> to ' -- a trivial operation for >hypercard and a big win for the user. > >Hey, APPLE! Please put this on the christmas list for the next release! Sorry Chuq, I don't agree with your solution. Even if Hypercard were patched as you suggest, what about all the other programs you run under MF (such as development systems, educational programs, adventure-type games, telecommunication programs, and even word processor sessions when preparing a message to be uploaded to a non-Mac machine)? A better approach is to use QuicKeys instead of a Smart-Quotes Init. You can setup the smart quote conversion to be active only from within your word processor. Before I'd want any programs patched, I'd like to see Apple get an extended ASCII character set officially approved. Given the number of PCs which can use things like curly quotes, trademark symbols, etc., I think its time ASCII was enhanced with these characters to improve portability and readibility in documents. Once there was a standard, I'm sure most programs would allow the use of these "special" characters. And speaking of characters, why isn't the shift-return translated into something visible (such as "<SR>" at the end of a line) in the posted copies of Windoid? This must be a simple chore regardless of the word processor used! (Both Word and MacWrite will do it in one operation.) Wayne Pollock, The MAD Scientist Usenet: ...!{ihnp4, cbatt}!codas!usfvax2!pollock GEnie: W.POLLOCK