DeScribe 5 - Tips and Techniques

Using Typographical Characters

Dialogs in OS/2 applications use a single code page, 850, which does not support the use of standard typographical characters such as typographical (or curly) quotes, en and em dashes, ellipsis, daggers, and double daggers.

DeScribe v. 5.0 has programmatically circumvented these operating system limitations in order to provide these items to our users. These characters have been specially added from code page 1004.

DeScribe refers to the automatic replacement of single and double quotes as Smart Quotes.

Accessing Typographical Characters

Typographical characters can be accessed automatically through Glossaries which causes single and double quotes to be switched to their typographical replacements, and manually via the Character Manager, the Search and Replace dialog, and other locations where specific character selections are allowed.

Use Typographical or Smart Quotes

DeScribe defaults to having typographical quotes turned on.

  1. Go to Utilities-Glossaries-Autolookup... .
  2. Place a check in Enable Smart Quotes.
    All instances of single and double quotes in all documents will be replaced with typographical quotes automatically as you type. Existing straight quotes are unmodified.

Disable Typographical Quotes

  1. Go to Utilities-Glossaries-Autolookup... .
  2. Remove the check in Enable Smart Quotes.
    DeScribe will use the standard keyboard characters for single and double quotes. Existing typographical quotes are unmodified.

Using the Character Manager to Access Typographical Characters

  1. The Character Manager allows you to either insert these characters directly into a document, or add these characters to the Insert Character dialog.
  2. Go to Edit-Character manager... .
  3. Press Special... .
    The list of typographical characters will be displayed.
  4. Select a typographical character from the list, and add it to the list of insert characters.
  5. Press Insert to insert the character in your document or Done to leave the dialog.
    Characters added to the Insert character selection can be used in any document.

Using Search and Replace to Access Typographical Characters

  1. The Search and Replace dialog allows you to search for these characters and replace them with other characters.
  2. Go to Words-Define Search.
  3. Press Special characters to select any of the listed characters for a search or replacement.

Using Typographical Characters in Outlines

  1. The Outline feature in styles will allow you to replace the standard bullet or number characters with typographical characters.
  2. Go to Style-Outlining/Bullets.
  3. Press the Prepend or Append list buttons will allow you to select typographical characters.

Macros designed for use with Smart Quotes

  1. DeScribe has several macros that can be used to alter the way typographical quotes work. Below is a list of these macros and their functions. The SingleQ and DoubleQ macros are very useful if you are creating a document that requires both typographical quotes and inch and foot marks (plain single and double quotes).

    DblClosQ - Inserts a double close quote in the document at the cursor position.
    DblOpenQ - Inserts left typographical quotes in the document at the cursor position.
    DoubleQ - Inserts an upright double quote at the cursor position regardless of the current setting of Smart Quotes. This macro can be attached to the keyboard
    Quotes - Encloses a defined block with quotes.
    SglClosQ - This macro inserts a single close quote in the document at the cursor position.
    SglOpenQ - This macro inserts a single open quote in the document at the cursor position.
    SingleQ - This macro inserts an upright single quote at the cursor position regardless of the current setting of Smart Quotes. This macro can be attached to the keyboard
    SmartQ - This macro changes "dumb" quotes to "smart" quotes throughout an entire document.

Notes:

Spacing problem on HP Laserjet printers using these characters often appear when Internal fonts (like CG Times) are being used. Though the characters print, correct character spacing is not being used. The spacing for the quote character often appears to be too wide ("like an extra space after a quote"). To alleviate this problem, disable Smart Quotes in AutoLookup Glossary, or make certain to use a standard ATM Type 1 font (Times or Times New Roman).

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