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A
AshleyHolmes1-Visitor
1-Visitor
June 28, 2012
Question

ACL to convert curly quote to straight quote on save

  • June 28, 2012
  • 2 replies
  • 1103 views

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

    2 replies

    A
    AndyEsslinger1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    June 28, 2012
    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
    M
    mramshaw1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    June 29, 2012

    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;
    }

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