[bksvol-discuss] Re: smart quotes
- From: "Maria Kristic" <maria6289@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 16:43:23 -0400
Hi E,
I understand your point/frustration. While I've always been checking for
smart quotes, ever since I began scanning for Bookshare, because of a tip on
Jake's site which suggested that they might cause issues in the final books
on the site, I, too, only learned that they were definitively an issue when
this discussion recently came up. For those who don't know, Jake's Bookshare
site is at www.jbrownell.com/bks, then look under Volunteer Tips, and one of
the tips there is called Removing Potential Problem Characters. Though it's
great that the information's available at Jake's site, I agree that a note
about this should be in the next update to the Volunteer Manual; if I hadn't
known about Jake's site from this list, I wouldn't have known that I should
be checking for smart quotes either.
Anyway, just to answer some of the below questions, to the best of my
knowledge. I can speak definitively to Kurzweil 1000, JAWS, and the PACMate,
since I use those. For the BrailleNote, I speak from memory, and it's been
nearly three years since I've used one, so I'm not sure whether this still
applies, but someone who's a BN user can hopefully correct me. As Jim's
pointed out, when one performs the Say Current Character command three times
in quick succession in JAWS (i.e., NUM PAD 5 in Desktop Layout or
JAWSKey+COMMA in Laptop Layout), JAWS will announce the values 8220 and 8221
for smart quotes, while generic ones are both spoken as value 34; these
values also appear on a Braille display being used with JAWS, and the same
holds true for Pocket JAWS on the PACMate (the Say Current Character command
is JAWSKey+COMMA on the QX and DOTS 3-6 CHORD or LeftArrow+RightArrow on the
BX). When I'm editing a book on my PACMate, I simply go through a similar
Find procedure to what I do in Word on my PC, except that rather than
entering the characters as carets followed by their ASCII values, I actually
insert the characters in to their appropriate edit fields using the ASCII
values of the smart quotes and by typing in the generic ones from the
keyboard. Incidentally, I've personally never experienced an issue with
Kurzweil 1000 v11.02 (or v10 and its patches, for that matter) where books
I've scanned have had smart quotes, but that's just been my experience. In
terms of K1000, speech will pronounce smart quotes as Open Quote and Closed
Quote, while generic quotes will simply be indicated as Quotation Mark;
interestingly enough, when K1000 is set to read all punctuation, smart
quotes won't be indicated when one passes dialog containing them, while they
will be read if the quotes are generic quotes. I don't know how OpenBook
speaks them. In terms of getting rid of them, I do so as I do it on my
PACMate, and I would think that this would apply in OB as well, entering the
smart quotes in to the Find edit field via their ASCII values (i.e., turn on
num lock, then on a desktop, hold down ALT while typing 0147 or 0148 on the
num pad, or on a laptop, hold down FN+ALT while typing the same characters
using the embedded num pad) and just typing the generic quotes via the
keyboard in to the Replace edit field. Finally, when I used the BrailleNote,
I seem to remember that Duxbury translated smart quotes differently from the
way generic quotes were displayed; while generic quotes were displayed as
the usual dots 2-3-6 and 3-5-6 for opening/closing, I believe that the
opening smart quote was displayed as dots 1-6, dots 3-5, dots 3-5, and
perhaps, that dot sequence was reversed for the closing one, though I
believe it was the same, so that would be a way to differentiate them while
simply reading through the file. In terms of replacing them, I imagine that
there's a way to enter them by ASCII (147/148) or Unicode (8220/8221) value,
and the BT command BACKSPACE+ENTER+DOTS 3-5 is coming to my mind to do this,
though I'm not at all certain whether I'm remembering that correctly, and I
can't remember whether that command is available in the Find/Replace dialog,
but I'm sure you'll know better than I at this point.
HTH,
Maria
Skype: MariaKristic
AIM: MCKristic
Email/MSN: maria6289@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Google Talk: Maria.Kristic@xxxxxxxxx
Yahoo Messenger: mariakristic@xxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of E.
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 2:25 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: smart quotes
And what about the people using k1000 Open Book
or braille displays such as braille note or
pacmate? How do we tell what is going on?
I feel like we are now trying to outwit the daisy
converter as well as the braille translator and stripper.
I join Tracy in total disgust.
E.
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