French quotation marks problem

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spira_post
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2020 8:52 pm

French quotation marks problem

Post by spira_post »

There seems to be a problem on how Textmaker formats French quotation marks or guillemets (« ») EDIT: (on the "Français (Canada) language only)

The correct way to quote in French goes like this:
Il dit alors :[space][open quote][space]La citation vient ici.[space][close quote][space]

Which should look like this:
Il dit alors : « La citation vient ici. »

But here is what we see (you don't expect two closing quotation marks):
Il dit alors : » La citation vient ici. »

When I first type the opening quotation mark, it is correct, but as soon as I type the following space it transforms into a closing quotation mark.

Here's what I think is happening:
Textmaker expects quotes to be formated following English rules, that is, without spaces after the opening quotation mark or before the closing quotation mark.

And then he said,[space][open quote]The quote goes here.[close quote][space]
And then he said, “The quote goes here.”

Following the English rules, when it encounters a space following a quotation mark, it thinks that this is the end of the quote so it closes the quote. This is perfectly fine for English documents, but extremely annoying for French documents and makes inserting quotes in a document very time consuming to get to the proper formating.

EDIT: This behaviour only occurs for the Canadian French language. If I select the French language the formating is correct. Would it be possible to make it so the "Français (Canada)" language quotation marks work the same way as the "Français" language ones?
spira_post
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2020 8:52 pm

Re: French quotation marks problem

Post by spira_post »

By the way, the Frech Canadian quotes are styled the same way as the French ones. See here for more details:
http://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?id=3375
SuperTech
SoftMaker Team
SoftMaker Team
Posts: 2948
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 5:31 pm

Re: French quotation marks problem

Post by SuperTech »

Thanks for sharing this detailed observation. I have forwarded the request to our development team.
SuperTech
SoftMaker Team
SoftMaker Team
Posts: 2948
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 5:31 pm

Re: French quotation marks problem

Post by SuperTech »

Our development team has fixed this problem and the solution will be included in the next service pack of SoftMaker Office.

Thank you
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