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alecE · 10-09-2010, 04:38 PM

This may be of assistance - it's not very elegant (in fact it's totally lacking in elegance), but it works, eventually, for me:
In your favoured text editor (mine is NoteTab Lite) perform the following steps (note that the $ character is being used here to denote a space):
- replace all instances of ^P^P^P with ^P^P (triple para to double para)
- replace all instances of ^P^P with ||
- replace all instances of ^P with $
- replace all instances of || with ^P^P
- add a leading at start of document and a at the end

You should now have a text that is neatly broken into paragraphs with zero hard line endings. Then:

- replace ' with “
- replace ' with ”
- replace .'$ with .”$
- ditto for comma, colon, semi-colon, query and bang followed by '$
- replace $' (or $" depending on text) with $‘
- use the above process to identify the '$ (or "$) and replace with ’$
Previous two steps should clean most of the quoted phrases ('Marie Celeste' eg and plural possessives survivors' eg)
- replace .$' with $“
- ditto for comma, colon, semi-colon, query and bang followed by $'
- should be fairly safe now to replace all remaining instances of ' with ’

This is not bullet-proof, but does clean up the text reasonably well. I generally reckon on 1 to 2 hours doing the above plus other odds and sods before moving the text into Sigil, where the html entities will be translated into 'proper' text.

10-09-2010, 04:38 PM	#32
alecE Evangelist Posts: 412 Karma: 546196 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: UK canal boat Device: sony prs505, prs650, kobo Glo HD liseuses	This may be of assistance - it's not very elegant (in fact it's totally lacking in elegance), but it works, eventually, for me: In your favoured text editor (mine is NoteTab Lite) perform the following steps (note that the $ character is being used here to denote a space): - replace all instances of ^P^P^P with ^P^P (triple para to double para) - replace all instances of ^P^P with \|\| - replace all instances of ^P with $ - replace all instances of \|\| with </p>^P^P<p> - add a leading <p> at start of document and a </p> at the end You should now have a text that is neatly broken into paragraphs with zero hard line endings. Then: - replace <p>' with <p>“ - replace '</p> with ”</p> - replace .'$ with .”$ - ditto for comma, colon, semi-colon, query and bang followed by '$ - replace $' (or $" depending on text) with $‘ - use the above process to identify the '$ (or "$) and replace with ’$ Previous two steps should clean most of the quoted phrases ('Marie Celeste' eg and plural possessives survivors' eg) - replace .$' with $“ - ditto for comma, colon, semi-colon, query and bang followed by $' - should be fairly safe now to replace all remaining instances of ' with ’ This is not bullet-proof, but does clean up the text reasonably well. I generally reckon on 1 to 2 hours doing the above plus other odds and sods before moving the text into Sigil, where the html entities will be translated into 'proper' text.