On 02/09/2013 02:10 AM, Rory O'Farrell wrote:
On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:49:52 -0500
doug <dmcgarr...@optonline.net> wrote:
I have imported a relatively long document from an email, which contains
a lot of single and double quote marks,
all of them "inch marks"--straight lines. they need to be curly quotes
and apostrophes. While I could and did
change the preferences (in whatever drop-down menu I found it) to use
single and double curly quotes, it does
not automatically take place, and I dont' know how to do a search and
replace on them, since some double
quotes are opening quotes, and some are closing quotes. So even if I
manually change one and then use it as
a template for the s&r, how will it know what to do? And what about
apostrophes, in words like "can't?"
I had to do this some years ago for several book texts, so what I say is
subject to possibly faulty memory!
Normally a leading quote is the sequence <space quote> and a trailing quote <quote space>,
or sometimes <StartOfPara quote> <quote EndofPara>. Ditto for single quotes, apart from the
apostrophe. I normally type a short line to generate sample curly quotes so I can Copy and Paste these
into the Replace box. My memory is that Find and Replace in OOo 3.x did not accept characters direct
from /Insert /Special Characters, so I used this work around; this may have changed in AOo 3.4.x.
I then was able to use a few Find and Replace sequences to change an entire
text. I think I actually used AltSearch in place of Find and Replace for the
last texts. I did have to check the texts for anomalies - there were a few, but
these were picked up quickly in a proof-reading scan; I converted several book
length texts in a matter of a few minutes each.
If you decide to use this method, do please keep an unmodified backup, as
global Find and Replaces can quickly be disastrous until you get the hang of
them.
it may be possible to do all this with either a macro or Regular Expressions. I
have no great experience with either.
Step 1: Turn change tracking on.
Step 2: Do your magic to make the changes, what ever that may be.
Step 3: Review your changes, which would hopefully be rather quick.
You can probably do a safe search and replace by finding all spaces
followed by a " and replace with a space followed by a curl-to-the-right
double quote. You know, low hanging fruit and all. Same with " followed
by a space. Just looking for some short cuts if you wanted to use search
and replace.
--
Andrew Pitonyak
My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt
Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php
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