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#31
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?
Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-10-08 13:32, Char Jackson wrote: On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:11:10 +0100, Andy Burns wrote: Mayayana wrote: ASCII is standard in all uses Except when UK users want a pound sign £ and get a hash symbol # (yes I realise Americans may call that a pound sign) I was working with a customer about a year ago, helping him edit the config file for a piece of his networking gear. He wanted to add a comment, which in that case is signified by a line starting with the "#" symbol. I asked him to type a pound sign. He paused, scanning his keyboard unsuccessfully, so I helpfully added, "Shift-3". He said, "Oh! You mean a hashtag!" Millennials... Thanks, Twitter! # as "pound sign" is engineering usage. Learned it 61 years ago.... Also used kip to mean 1,000 lbs. BTW, robo-instrictions to "enter account number" usually continue with "... and the pound sign." Wikipedia files that symbol under "Number Sign". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign I'd tried a search on Octothorpe, and ended up there. Paul |
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#32
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?
"Andy Burns" wrote
| ASCII is standard in all uses | | Except when UK users want a pound sign £ and get a hash symbol # (yes I | realise Americans may call that a pound sign) But isn't your pound sign encoded in the ANSI 128+ range? I don't say pound for #. It's used in things like price signs on produce sometimes and people recognize it in context as meaning pound, but I call it a hash sign. Microsoft, with their maddening habit of misusing language in marketing, hijacked it to mean "sharp". Of course in music it means that, but they named a programming language C# and then insisted it must be pronounced "C sharp". It's a sort of passive aggressive way of forcing people to describe the language as superior. A play on C++. That reminds me of a comedian I once saw talking about pretensious use of language. He was complaining about a flash-in-the-pan musical group named Sade, but pronounced Shah-DAY: "Shah-DAY. Give me a break. S-A-D-E doesn't spell Shah-DAY. I spell my name D-A-V-E, but I don't pronounce it "Bob". |
#33
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?
Mayayana wrote:
But isn't your pound sign encoded in the ANSI 128+ range? It is, but back in the early 80's it was pretty common for printers to have a DIP switch to flick between US and UK mode, so that ASCII code 35 printed a £ instead of a # |
#34
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?
On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:06:03 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , Ken Blake writes: On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 10:17:22 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: In message , harry newton writes: [] The problem is that my text editor (Gvim) isn't handling the dastardly characters, so all I want to do is get rid of any character that any normal text editor can't/won't/doesn't handle. [] Of course, some would (and will) say why are you using a text editor (probably inserting the word "still", to imply you're a dinosaur), Using a text editor doesn't mean you're a dinosaur. Some of us occasionally do things like create/modify .bat files. I said _some_ would say. I'm not one of them (-: Yes, I know. I understood that. I was merely commenting on the views of any of the "some" who would say that. |
#35
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?
On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:10:30 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , Ken Blake writes: [] The problem is that my text editor (Gvim) isn't handling the dastardly characters, so all I want to do is get rid of any character that any normal text editor can't/won't/doesn't handle. "Normal text editor"? I just pasted curly quotes into Notepad to be sure it handled curly quotes. It does. If yours doesn't, I suggest you change your text editor. The distinction is blurred. To some people, a text editor is something that doesn't do formatting, bold, italic, underlined, fonts, etcetera (and thus NotePad is one such); to other people, it is one that only works with ASCII codes 32 to 126 plus newline. There _are_ places where only the latter is valid. (Headerless usenet, for example, though ANSI characters _usually_ get through that unaltered.) To me, there are word processors (e.g. WordPerfect and Word), text editors (e.g. Notepad) and *glorified* text editors (e, g. WordPad). As far as I'm concerned, WordPad is a useless program. I don't need anything in between a word processor and a text editor. Microsoft probably provides WordPad for those people who don't want to spend the money on a real word processor, but I think those people would be much better off with Open Office or Libre Office. |
#36
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?
On Sun, 08 Oct 2017 11:57:51 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote: On Sat, 7 Oct 2017 23:30:52 +0000 (UTC), harry newton wrote: The problem is that my text editor (Gvim) isn't handling the dastardly characters, so all I want to do is get rid of any character that any normal text editor can't/won't/doesn't handle. The obvious answer is to use another text editor, one that doesn't have the problems that you object to. I use and recommend Notepad++. Ditto to all three of those statements. |
#37
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?
On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:11:10 +0100, Andy Burns
wrote: Mayayana wrote: ASCII is standard in all uses Except when UK users want a pound sign £ and get a hash symbol # (yes I realise Americans may call that a pound sign) Because of the potential confusion, I always prefer to call it a "number sign." |
#38
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?
On 10/8/17 12:45 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Andy Burns" wrote | ASCII is standard in all uses | | Except when UK users want a pound sign £ and get a hash symbol # (yes I | realise Americans may call that a pound sign) But isn't your pound sign encoded in the ANSI 128+ range? I don't say pound for #. It's used in things like price signs on produce sometimes and people recognize it in context as meaning pound, but I call it a hash sign. Microsoft, with their maddening habit of misusing language in marketing, hijacked it to mean "sharp". Of course in music it means that, but they named a programming language C# and then insisted it must be pronounced "C sharp". It's a sort of passive aggressive way of forcing people to describe the language as superior. A play on C++. That reminds me of a comedian I once saw talking about pretensious use of language. He was complaining about a flash-in-the-pan musical group named Sade, but pronounced Shah-DAY: "Shah-DAY. Give me a break. S-A-D-E doesn't spell Shah-DAY. I'm not especially fond of Sade, but they were hardly a flash in the pan. And that's really how to pronounce Sade Adu's name in Yoruba. I spell my name D-A-V-E, but I don't pronounce it "Bob". He gets points for not saying "Da-VAY". -- Jerry Friedman |
#39
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?
That reminds me of a comedian I once saw talking
about pretensious use of language. He was complaining about a flash-in-the-pan musical group named Sade, but pronounced Shah-DAY: "Shah-DAY. Give me a break. S-A-D-E doesn't spell Shah-DAY. I spell my name D-A-V-E, but I don't pronounce it "Bob". Sade (pronounced Sha-day) is a Nigerian-born English singer who pronounces her name that way because that's how you say it in Yoruba, which is her father's native language. The band was named after her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sade_%28singer%29 [Followups set to aue] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- e m a i l : j a c k @ c a m p i n . m e . u k Jack Campin, 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland mobile 07895 860 060 http://www.campin.me.uk Twitter: JackCampin |
#40
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?
"Jack Campin" wrote
| Sade (pronounced Sha-day) is a Nigerian-born English singer who | pronounces her name that way because that's how you say it in | Yoruba, which is her father's native language. The band was | named after her. | Yes, I gathered that. Though the link says her name is actually Helen and Sade is a nickname based on part of her middle name. Whether or not the name is "authentic", the whole presentation fit and I could see why the comedian made the joke. The topic was excessive valorizing of language, especially for marketing purposes. The way I saw it, from their videos, the band Sade was marketing a sexy, soulful, stylish, moodiness. The kind of smoky, elegant swank one might like for background music in an upscale bar. Hot jazz. Passion. Living to the hilt. But marketing was arguably all they achieved. (As does hot jazz, for that matter.) There was an over-the- top feel to it and the vocalist was not notably sexy nor soulful. The name, then, seemed to fit the strategy, thus being easy pickings for a comedian. That, of course, is only my musically-untrained personal opinion. I didn't mean to upset Sade fans. But even if you loved their music wouldn't you agree they were peddling swank? I don't imagine for a moment that the French-ish hint of elegance that "ShahDAY" conveys in English, and the secondary association with Marquis de Sade, went unrecognized when they were naming the band. It's exotic. In other words, if the lead vocalist were in the habit of using her first name, Helen, something tells me they wouldn't have named the band "Helen".... Though I suppose they still could have pronounced that ShahDAY. |
#41
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?
On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 14:45:15 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote: "Andy Burns" wrote | ASCII is standard in all uses | | Except when UK users want a pound sign àand get a hash symbol # (yes I | realise Americans may call that a pound sign) But isn't your pound sign encoded in the ANSI 128+ range? I don't say pound for #. It's used in things like price signs on produce sometimes and people recognize it in context as meaning pound, but I call it a hash sign. Microsoft, with their maddening habit of misusing language in marketing, hijacked it to mean "sharp". Of course in music it means that, but they named a programming language C# and then insisted it must be pronounced "C sharp". It's a sort of passive aggressive way of forcing people to describe the language as superior. A play on C++. That reminds me of a comedian I once saw talking about pretensious use of language. He was complaining about a flash-in-the-pan musical group named Sade, but pronounced Shah-DAY: "Shah-DAY. Give me a break. S-A-D-E doesn't spell Shah-DAY. I spell my name D-A-V-E, but I don't pronounce it "Bob". Well of course not. D-A-V-E should be pronounced "Dah-VAY". The band Sade is a bit more than a flash-in-the pan. It won four Grammys. It can sometimes be difficult to work out whether a mention of "Sade" refers to the band or its singer Sade from whom it gets its name. -- Peter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english) |
#42
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?
Harry Newton
How can we convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows? http://i67.tinypic.com/2h5mjbr.jpg I like to save into TEXT files on Windows techni- cal information cut and pasted from disjoint news articles where the unprintable curly quotes drive me nuts! You have my sympathy. The world has grown unicode- crazy, but I will not forgo my 8-bit plain-text files (not 7-bit, for I need English and Russian). Since you are using Vim, the tool you need is al- ready at your fingertips -- just set up a macro to replace the offending unicode characters with their ASCII representations. You might also want to rid yourself of unicode apostrophes and em-dashes. P.S.: Never do that for true typography and be chary with any documents meant for printing. -- () ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail /\ http://preview.tinyurl.com/qcy6mjc [archived] |
#43
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?
On 10/7/2017 6:30 PM, harry newton wrote:
This ponderous Microsoft Office approach might work - but I'm hoping for a far simpler and less monotlithic solution to the basic problem that everyone should have if they cut and paste into text from the web. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-curly-quotes-to-straight-quotes-and-vice-versa-017963A0-BC5F-486B-9C9D-0EC511A8FB8F Doe not,from memory, Paste Special-Plain Text or some equivalent do that? |
#44
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?
On 10/8/2017 4:25 PM, NotMe wrote:
On 10/7/2017 6:30 PM, harry newton wrote: This ponderous Microsoft Office approach might work - but I'm hoping for a far simpler and less monotlithic solution to the basic problem that everyone should have if they cut and paste into text from the web. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-curly-quotes-to-straight-quotes-and-vice-versa-017963A0-BC5F-486B-9C9D-0EC511A8FB8F Doe not,from memory, Paste Special-Plain Text or some equivalent do that? Should be Unformatted Text. |
#45
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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?
On 10/7/17 3:38 PM, harry newton wrote:
How can we convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows? .... Since you posted to a.u.e., I thought I'd inform you of the original of "dastard". It turned out to be different from what I expected, but here it is anyway. dastard (n.) 'mid-15c., "one who is lazy or dull;" an English formation on a French model, probably from */dast/, "dazed," past participle of /dasen/ "to daze" (see /daze/ (v.)) + deprecatory suffix *-ard*. Meaning "one who shirks from danger" is late 15c.' http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?...search=dastard -- Jerry Friedman |
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