ACL to convert curly quote to straight quote on save

[AshleyHolmes]

Our editors are copying from Word and pasting into AE regularly. The Word documents they are working with are produced by a variety of external sources anduse the full spectrum of quotes. Does anyone have a snippet of ACL that can be run on save (XML)to convert all quotes to simple straight quotes?

Thanks for your help all!
Ashley

[AndyEsslinger]

No code at all solution:
The first thing to do is turn off "replace straight quotes with smart quotes" in Word Auto Correct (and check the AutoFormat tab also).
Then, click on replace, select a left quote in what to replace
Put a straight quote in the replace with field.
Click on replace all. The select a right quote and repeat.
Then save your word document, This is from Outlook but Word has the same thing:

[cid:image001.png@01CD5543.2DC816F0]

Possible ACL solution (untested):
Or, you might try entering this on the AE command line. No guarantee and if it causes you PC to melt into a puddle of green slime please send pictures.:
sub '[״]"
sub '[˝]"

-Andy
\ / Andy Esslinger LM Aero - Tech Order Data
_____-/\-_____ (817) 279-0442 1 Lockheed Blvd, MZ 4285
\_\/_/ (817) 777 3047 Fort Worth, TX 76108-3916

[mramshaw]

I had this same issue a few years ago and solved it by adding a callback function whenever a paste is done in arbortext. This may look convoluted and could probably be simplified but it works. I put this line in the instance.acl of the document:

doc_add_callback( current_doc(), 'paste', 'paste_callback');

and the function is this:

function paste_callback( doc, default, op )
{
if ( op == 1 )
{
# returning the -1 aborts the paste operation which is what we want since
# sub_quote will do it instead
sub_quote;
return -1;
}
else if ( op == 2 )
{
# this is where processing occurs

return 0;
}
}

which calls this:

#THIS ALIAS WILL SUBSTITUTE STRAIGHT QUOTES FOR CURLY QUOTES ON PASTE OPS
alias sub_quote {
if (buffer_doc(_APT_DRAGDROP_PASTEBUF) != -1) {
if (buffer_empty(_APT_DRAGDROP_PASTEBUF) == 0) { #Then we have a drag/drop op
set paste = _APT_DRAGDROP_PASTEBUF;
paste;
set paste=default;
return;
}
} else {
buffer_clipboard_contents($oldtxt);
}
$newtxt = java_static('id.lso.gems.epic.EpicUtil', 'subCurlyQuotes', $oldtxt);
insert_buffer($newtxt, 1, default,0);
#set pendingdelete=on;
if (length($newtxt) > 0) {
paste; #testbuf;
} else {
message_box("Paste buffer is empty. Please select text you wish to copy and try again.", 0);
}
set paste=default;
}

The java function is:

public static String subCurlyQuotes(String selectedText) {
selectedText = selectedText.replaceAll(String.valueOf('\u201C'), "");
selectedText = selectedText.replaceAll(String.valueOf('\u201D'), "");

return selectedText;
}