Incorrrectly turned inverted comma

[ecbritz]

The following, very commonly and regularly used Afrikaans word has the inverted comma turned the wrong way around when it is typed into a Textmaker document: 'n. The word 'n has exactly the same meaning and use as the word (the article) "a" in English, e.g. "a car", "an empty cup", "a dollar note". etc.

The frequent use in Afrikaans of 'n causes a big problem when using Textmaker. One could switch Smart Quotes off, but might there be a solution with Smart Quotes switched on? The easiest way to show the problem is with the attachment that comes with this posting.

In the attachment, I show the bothersome work-around I use as a makeshift solution. Is there another way I could produce the correctly turned inverted comma when typing 'n ?

If there is no other solution available, please let me know rather than just ignoring this posting. I would appreciate either a solution, or a confirmation that there is no other solution than my own work-around, very much.

May I add that I'm not aware of any other word in Afrikaans -- or in the other languages I know -- that consists of a single quotation mark (an inverted comma) followed by ONE alphabetical character. If there are other such words in other languages, I'm quite sure they will use the inverted comma in the way it is used in Afrikaans.

In other words, it should be possible to program Textmaker to turn the inverted comma they way it should be in cases where the inverted comma is followed by one alphabetical character, without a closing quotation mark added -- thus indicating an autonomous word, rather than a quotation.

[Jossi]

A closely related problem (correct single quotation marks in German) has been discussed extensively in the German forum, but unfortunately without a result so far. (Here, with links to older discussions.) To make a long story short: In TextMaker, the apostrophe and the single quotation mark are assigned to the same key. As a consequence, with SmartQuotes on the automatism is not always able to distinguish correctly between these two glyphs. So, at the moment, your problem can only be solved by a workaround. I recommend defining a SmartText entry for ’n, e.g. "nn", so that the whole word is inserted just by typing nn. This seems a bit easier to me than the workaround you are using now.

[martin-k]

You can also assign a key (in Insert > Symbol) to the specific quote mark you want.

[ecbritz]

Thanks! The " nn = 'n " SmartText solution works fine. I enter character 0336 by typing two hyphens in a row (followed by a space) in the same way. I try to minimize key-combination accelerators because I tend to forget them. I'll read the German discussion, thanks for the reference!

[ecbritz]

I see that you were insulted about this matter! "Mir scheint, dass sich die Softmaker-Programmierer mehr darum kümmern, neumodischen Firlefanz in Softmaker Office einzubauen, anstatt altbekannte Mängel in Ordnung zu bringen."

It would be interesting to see if Microsoft has managed to adapt MS Word to all the rules, conventions and customs of the many individual languages they try to support. I doubt it. The different Germanic languages are all deviations from and deformations of some original Germanic language, a hypothetical rather than real language because there was never any "pure" Germanic language either. The "altbekannte Mängel in Ordnung zu bringen" will take some doing. Good luck!