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August 25

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Curly quote marks

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I want to do a search&replace to change double curly quote marks to straight ones in the wikitext on the edit page of Wikipedia article. (Curly quote marks cause problems sometimes.) I have Windows 7 and my Toshiba laptop keyboard does not have curly quote marks, and I cannot form them by pressing Alt+0145, etc on the numerical keypad; I can only form them using the code &(plus)rdquo; and &(plus)ldquo;. (Ignore "plus" - "nowiki" is ineffective to stop the code converting here.) &(plus)#8221; does not work either. I tried using search&replace on the Advanced ribbon at the top of the edit page with the rdquo code, but it doesn't work (as I expected). Is there any other way I can find the curly quote marks in the edit text? --P123ct1 (talk) 09:46, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you find them in the text, you could try copying them and pasting them into the search field where you need them. I often do this for the ¢ symbol since I can never remember the code for it. Dismas|(talk) 10:53, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I have done it that way. --P123ct1 (talk) 12:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If you don't mind an overkill solution, you can make and run an autohotkey script in the background and assign a keyboard shortcut to create the curly quotes. This page, http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/Send.htm, covers the send command, it's fairly straightforward from there if you're familiar with programming - if not, I can help you put something together on my talk page, if you'd like. But, like I said, unless you are using these all the time, this may be overkill.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 15:43, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What problems do curly quote marks cause? Your laptop keyboard almost certainly has some way to enable a numeric keypad overlay, which you could use to enter the keypad codes, though not very conveniently. If you're on Windows, you can use the Character Map utility: press Alt+V to enable Advanced view, Alt+E to Search, type "quotation" or just "quo" in the search box, press Enter, and double-click on the appropriate symbol, which will be automatically copied to the clipboard. View the source of my reply to see how to write &rdquo; and the like in wikitext. Years ago I wrote an AutoHotkey script to generate non-ASCII characters from ASCII character sequences that I could remember easily, which I'll paste below for anyone who's interested. -- BenRG (talk) 17:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Phoenixia1177: Thanks, I will look at that, but really I don't have to do this often enough to justify that solution. BenRG : Yes, that is what I was looking for. I haven't had Word 7 for long and haven't found my way around it yet. I still mourn the passing of XP Professional, which was so user-friendly. The curly quote marks can cause tremendous problems with footnotes, as I found out to my cost earlier today - [1] You will see from this why I wanted to find a simple way of getting rid of them! --P123ct1 (talk) 01:01, 26 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
AutoHotkey script
#a::
	InputBox, Code, Unicode input, , , 160, 100
	if ErrorLevel
		return
	if (Code == "") {
		Run, %A_WinDir%\System32\charmap.exe
		return
	}
	FileRead, Haystack, *P65001 %A_ScriptDir%\UnicodeKeys.utf.txt
	Code = [%Code%]
	Pos := Instr(Haystack, Code, true)
	if (Pos == 0) {
		MsgBox, Not found
		return
	}
	RegExMatch(Haystack, "[^\[\s]*", Ch, Pos + StrLen(Code))
	SendInput %Ch%
	return

The hotkey is Win+A (#a), which you can replace with whatever you want. The UnicodeKeys.utf.txt needs to be in the same directory as the script, and must be UTF-8 encoded (it's an option in Notepad's "Save as" dialog). Here's part of mine:

[-a]ā ['a]á [`a]à [^a]â [:a]ä [oa]å [~a]ã [-A]Ā ['A]Á [`A]À [^A]Â [:A]Ä [OA]Å [~A]Ã
[-e]ē ['e]é [`e]è [^e]ê [:e]ë [ae]æ [oe]œ [-E]Ē ['E]É [`E]È [^E]Ê [:E]Ë [AE]Æ [OE]Œ
[-i]ī ['i]í [`i]ì [^i]î [:i]ï             [-I]Ī ['I]Í [`I]Ì [^I]Î [:I]Ï
[-o]ō ['o]ó [`o]ò [^o]ô [:o]ö [~o]õ       [-O]Ō ['O]Ó [`O]Ò [^O]Ô [:O]Ö [~O]Õ
[-u]ū ['u]ú [`u]ù [^u]û [:u]ü             [-U]Ū ['U]Ú [`U]Ù [^U]Û [:U]Ü
[eth]ð [thorn]þ [,c]ç [~n]ñ [ss]ß         [Eth]Ð [Thorn]Þ [,C]Ç [~N]Ñ
[ e]ɛ [ i]ɪ [ o]ɔ [ u]ʊ [sh]ʃ [v]ʌ [zh]ʒ

[neg]¬ [A]∀ [E]∃ [!E]∄
[o]° [deg]° [degree]° [2]² [3]³ [^n]ⁿ
[pm]± [mp]∓ [-]− [x]× [times]× [div]÷ [.]· [sqrt]√
[1/4]¼ [1/2]½ [3/4]¾ [1/3]⅓ [2/3]⅔ [1/8]⅛ [3/8]⅜ [5/8]⅝ [7/8]⅞ [inf]∞ [infty]∞
[cap]∩ [cup]∪ [sqcup]⊔ [in]∊ [notin]∉
[~]≈ [approx]≈ [ne]≠ [!=]≠ [/=]≠ [<=]≤ [>=]≥ [===]≡ [cong]≅
[del]∂ [partial]∂ [nabla]∇ [int]∫ [integral]∫
[_0]₀ [_1]₁ [_2]₂ [_3]₃ [_i]ᵢ [_o]ₒ
[Gamma]Γ [Delta]Δ [Theta]Θ [Lambda]Λ [Xi]Ξ
[Pi]Π [Sigma]Σ [Phi]Φ [Psi]Ψ [Omega]Ω
[alpha]α [beta]β [gamma]γ [gam]γ [delta]δ [epsilon]ε [eps]ε [eps2]ϵ [zeta]ζ
[eta]η [theta]θ [th]θ [iota]ι [kappa]κ [lambda]λ [lam]λ [mu]μ [nu]ν [xi]ξ
[pi]π [rho]ρ [sigma]σ [tau]τ [phi]φ [chi]χ [psi]ψ [omega]ω [om]ω
[aleph]ℵ [u]µ [micro]µ [ohm]Ω [hbar]ħ [ell]ℓ
[otimes]⊗ [ox]⊗ [oplus]⊕ [o+]⊕

[--]– [---]— [`]‘ [']’ [``]“ ['']” [...]… [cdots]⋯
[cent]¢ [lb]£ [pound]£ [euro]€ [yen]¥
[sec]§ [section]§ [copy]© [copyright]©
[par]¶ [para]¶ [tm]™ [TM]™ [dag]† [dagger]† [ddag]‡ [ddagger]‡
[bullet]• [<-]← [->]→ [^-]↑ [v-]↓ [<->]↔ [=>]⇒ [<=>]⇔ [|->]↦ [mapsto]↦
Haven&t you ever seen problems with character encoding of non-ASCII characters? I?ll admit that I don't know how/why it&rsquos a problem, but it□s fairly common in my experience :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SemanticMantis (talkcontribs)
In some applications sure, but Wikipedia and all major browsers have supported Unicode for ages. But P123ct1 was talking about quotes in HTML syntax, which makes sense. -- BenRG (talk) 04:16, 26 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]