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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Re: Smart single quotes in LyX (1.6.1, Mac OS X 10.5.6)
From:       Grant Jacobs <gjacobs () bioinfotools ! com>
Date:       2009-03-24 0:21:46
Message-ID: a0624080fc5ec7291ddd4 () [10 ! 1 ! 1 ! 4]
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Thanks for your reply. This doesn't quite address what I was after: 
almost, but not quite.

In case it's of use to others I'm going to explain what I wanted 
again, then how I have a sort-of solution, or more accurately a 
solution that raises another problem in it's place.

I was asking for a means to set up LyX so that whenever I type a 
single quote ('), the single quote would be treated as a "smart" 
quote, i.e. LyX would interpret it as an open or close quote as 
appropriate.

(I was not trying to set some key sequence to generate a smart single 
quote, I already knew how to do that--that's actually what I wanted 
to *stop* having to do, a key sequence is already set for generating 
a "smart" single quote by default. I was trying to get a single quote 
to be treated as a smart quote without having to remember to type a 
"special" key sequence.)

Furthermore, what I really wanted was to still get a "straight" 
quote, using a key sequence. The overall effect wanted was that of 
having a key sequence that might by default generate a "smart quote", 
generate a straight quote and have the quote character default to a 
smart quote. This can be achieved with the double quotes; I was 
trying to achieve the same with a single quote.


If you try set "'" to be the "mapped" key in the fashion BH 
describes, LyX will complain that:

    Shortcut `'' is already bound to:
    self-insert
    You need to remove that binding before creating a new one.

These "self-insert" bindings seem to be set in a file held within the 
application bundle, so "strictly speaking" this solution should be 
out of bounds to an end user. Ideally what would nice was a means to 
have "'" act as a "smart quote" through the user interface, and 
hopefully in a way I will not have keep manually updating the binding 
each time I update LyX. This doesn't seem to be possible at present.

My eventual sort-of solution was to edit the latinkeys.bind file (in 
the 'bind' directory of the Resources section of the application), so 
that

    \bind "quoteright"		"self-insert"

now reads:

    \bind "quoteright"		"quote-insert single"

This certainly makes all single quotes appear as "smart quotes", 
except now I can't find a way to map cmd-' (or whatever) to generate 
a "straight" quote, as it insists on generating a "quote-insert 
single"!

While I suspect there will be a solution to this somehow, this does 
suggest to me that the system for applying character mappings has 
some weaknesses.


Grant


>On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 9:53 PM, Grant Jacobs 
><gjacobs@bioinfotools.com> wrote:
>>
>>  Is there a means to make "smart" *single* quotes the default in the same way
>>  as is done for double quotes?
>
>LyX > Preferences > Editing > Shortcuts
>
>1. Enter "quote" in the "Show key-bindings containing" field
>2. select "quote-insert single"
>3. click the "Modify button"
>4. click the "Clear" button on the dialog that pops up
>5. type the key you want to bind smart single quotes to
>6. click "OK"
>7. click "Save"
>
>Bennett


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