Applying "smart" typography to imported text

[Rick]

Textmaker does a great job converting regular quotes to smart quotes and hyphens to em dashes as you type, but what if I'm importing text that doesn't have these typographic features? How can I apply smart typography to imported text. With LibreOffice you can go to Tools > Autocorrect > Apply and it will convert everything. In Word, you just search for " and replace it with " and it knows what to do. Any way to do this in Textmaker?

[Woody44]

Are you pasting as formatted text, or unformatted text? If the font in effect at the point of insertion supports smart (curly) quotes, pasting as unformatted text should allow the smart quotes to be entered automatically.

I think ...

[Rick]

I tried this, but it doesn't work. It isn't a big deal, but these days I get a lot of files in markdown syntax, and they don't use smart typography. The workflow now is to just paste into LibreOffice Writer, use the option to apply smart typography within LO, and then it import into Textmaker. It's a minimal extra step but it would be nice to dispense with it.

Unless I'm missing a step and there's a way to do this I haven't discovered, the ability to apply formatting to existing text might be a useful feature for an upcoming release.

[SuperTech]

Thank you for posting your issue. I have forwarded this as an improvement suggestion.

[RKanarek]

Greetings Other Richard,

Note: all of the following is from memory; buyer beware.

My solution has always been to manually edit the text. While TM's (mostly wonderful and powerful) search and replace function allows only a tiny number of special characters to be inserted for searching and/or replacement, one can copy and paste other special characters, including smart quotes. Of course, using this technique one can only do one side of a smart quote at a time.

Unless I'm mistaken, SM has recently fiddled-with/enhanced TM paste special feature. How this changes things I do not know.

Of topic:
As long as you're reporting thing, ST, perhaps you could report that it would be swell if ordinary, non-breaking, and soft hyphens could be searched for and replaced.

[Hook]

Here's the solution I was given last year and it works very well!

https://forum.softmaker.com/viewtopic.p ... 343#p85343