Inverted quotes

[Aldous U]

Good idea, Ruchama. I'll do that.

Thanks again for everyone's suggestions!

AU

[greenmorpher]

On Leopard, eh? Should have thought of that. I'm on X.4.11. Mind you, lots of people on this list jumped on to Leopard straight away, and no-one else has reported this problem.

Verdana shouldn't be a problem. It is my screen type of choice; I use it 100% of the time when entering text.

As already suggested, sending the thing to the Solanoids sounds like the right idea.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- the secrets of how type can help you to sell or influence, now at the new low price of $29.95. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com or Amazon.

[Ruchama]

me too- working on tiger.

[ptram]

I confirm it works as it should, under OS X 10.4.11 Italian. I can't check under Leopard.

[xiamenese]

I'm one who jumped, so I've been on 10.5, 10.5.1, 10.5.2 and 10.5.3 and I've never seen anything like that.

I've just thought ... I don't think you've said what hardware you are using. You haven't had a "coffee moment" with your keyboard have you? The only other thing I can think of is that you've got a gremlin in your keyboard that periodically sends the wrong code ... Or hang on ... Are you using a MacBook or MacBook Pro bought in 2006, the year Sony had the disaster with their batteries? My MBP was one of those and I found that my battery was beginning to expand when I couldn't press the trackpad button. Another sign of faulty battery is the keyboard playing up, often in random fashion. If you are using a MacBook or MacBook Pro, get your battery checked pronto!

My wife's MacBook was bought about a month before this MBP and when I had my battery problem, I told her to get hers checked while it was still under guarantee, even though hers had no symptoms ... She's just told me that her battery was faulty and it has been replaced free of charge.

If you're not on a MacBook or MacBook Pro, and have not had a "coffee moment" ... then I don't know what else it can be.

Mark

[Aldous U]

No, no 'coffee moment', and although I have a MacBook Pro it's only a few weeks old and I haven't yet used Nisus on it (can't get my own BT Internet connection with the damn thing, though I can get it in the house next door, mid-Atlantic and New York - but that's another problem). My desk top is a four-and-a-half-year-old G5 with four hard drives and plenty of memory, so it shouldn't be that. As for my keyboard, the problem started while still using the one that came with the computer, but persists with the 'flat' one I bought two or three months ago.

AU

[xiamenese]

Then I'm stumped. I would still put my bet on the keyboard or keyboard software, though it's curious that it apparently only does it in NWP. Are you sure it doesn't happen in TextEdit, Bean or any of the other apps based on the Apple Text Engine (Word uses Microsoft's own proprietary text engine)?

At this point, I would (a) run disk repair from the System DVDs, (b) repair permissions, (c) remove my NWP preference file to some other place on the hard disk where I could get back at it and run NWP so that it creates a new preference file, (d) re-install NWP completely ... and if all that still makes no difference do an Archive and Re-install of the system. Others who are more geeky than me can perhaps suggest other apps which might help you diagnose and repair what's going on.

As for getting onto your BTInternet on your MBP, I've never had any trouble getting on anything on this one ... but I have to say that at home we broke off relations with BT completely about 15 years ago, and now I'm actually in China so I have to deal with the vagaries of Fujian Telecom, and the Chinese national internet scanning software ... which is bizarre to say the least! So I can't really advise there, I'm afraid.

Mark

[greenmorpher]

Aldous

You still haven't mentioned what OS you are operating on (or at least, I didn't notice it). Also did you try changing the USB keyboard cable and the USB port you plug it into?

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- the secrets of how type can help you to sell or influence, now at the new low price of $29.95. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com or Amazon.

[Aldous U]

Worth trying, Geoff. Have just changed ports. Sadly, the first sentence I typed came out with an inverted closing quote!

I'm using OS X 10.5.3

AU

[Elbrecht]

Aldous -

what keyboard 1) hardware 2) software are you using; what language is your 3) Leopard running; what's the 4) Language hierarchy like in System Preferences/International/Language; what language is 5) Nisus running in; what's your 6) document language like; what language is the 7) quotation mark in? This global writing thing is to be fine tuned - otherwise all gets mixed up. German for example uses English left quote for ending quotation mark...

So it's a bug only, if you get your languages straight.

HE

[mouthyorange]

I've been having the same problem Aldous U has, exactly the same, for a long time now. It's been driving me crazy. I'm a trained typist and freelance editor, and I know the unpredictable inverted quotes I'm running into are not stemming from the way I type.
I'm using NWP 1.2, but had the same problem in the previous version.
I'm on a PowerBook G4, circa 2001. Using Tiger.
I use a Kinesis Advantage keyboard (ergonomic) but this problem also happens when I use the laptop's built-in keyboard.
The problem so far only happens to me at the end of a quoted sentence. I'll open the sentence with an open quote that comes out fine, then type the sentence, then type the punctuation mark for the end of the sentence, then type the close quote which sometimes comes out as an open quote. IT ALWAYS INVERTS AFTER A PUNCTUATION MARK. Period, comma, exclamation, you name it. If I backspace-delete both the wrong quote mark and the punctuation mark and then just type a quote mark again (without the punctuation) it comes out as a close quote as it should.
I just finished writing a book and I was under so much pressure for ten months and this quotes thing kept happening to me. I never knew when it would and had to backtrack so many times to fix them. Disruptive!
I "fixed" them this way. I'd type a sentence, say, ending in [ ." ] But that quote would come out as an open quote. Immediately after it I'd type another quote which would come out as a close quote. [ ."" ] Then I'd back up my cursor until it was between the two quotes and then backspace-delete the first of the two, the open one. Now I've got the quotes where I need 'em.

[martin]

Does the problem occur in a new document where you type only a single simple sentence, eg:

She said, "proper curls please."

If the problem still occurs, can you try again in another new document with a different font applied? If the problem does not occur, can you send us a document where the problem does occur? Please be sure to note the exact location where to type what to make the curling go awry. Thanks.

[mouthyorange]

If the problem still occurs, can you try again in another new document with a different font applied? If the problem does not occur, can you send us a document where the problem does occur?

Okay, Martin, I'll letcha know. Problem is that it occurs unpredictably, so I can't say when I'll be able to find this out.

Thanks, though.