Sigil Spell Checker Coming~ soon?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Rand Brittain

I'm really looking forward to the appearance of the plugin system for Sigil, so someone can make a plugin that will spot English-style punctuaton and convert it to US-style, or vice-versa. Doing it manually to suit myself is annoying.

I really don't think it matters...
as long as it is consistent

[Rand Brittain]

Originally Posted by theducks

I really don't think it matters...
as long as it is consistent

I like the American style better, as a personal preference. And a plugin that runs a specific set of finds and replaces could do most of the conversion very simply.

[cybmole]

Hitch - thanks for the link.

I am curious as to how style "rules" such as the detailed ones for quotation marks come into being - have they just evolved during history of publishing then gotten written down?
do big book publishers have style "bibles" in which all such things are documented or is that left to academia?
do printed book publishers have automated tools to check / enforce such styles?

back with the spell checker issue - a UK to US spelling converter & vice-versa plug in could be a future nice-to-have . I assume that conversion tables already exist online somewhere, at least for the most common terms - like color/colour?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Hitch - thanks for the link.

I am curious as to how style "rules" such as the detailed ones for quotation marks come into being - have they just evolved during history of publishing then gotten written down?
do big book publishers have style "bibles" in which all such things are documented or is that left to academia?
do printed book publishers have automated tools to check / enforce such styles?

back with the spell checker issue - a UK to US spelling converter & vice-versa plug in could be a future nice-to-have . I assume that conversion tables already exist online somewhere, at least for the most common terms - like color/colour?

Mostly, it's been that the rules have come into being by usage over the centuries; playwrights, in the English world, and Biblical scholars have had the most influence on the printed word. And, yes, there are style "bibles" that editors, publishers and printers use.

Here at the good ship Booknook {cough, cough}, we mostly make it up as we go along, WITHIN the reasonable rules of correct punctuation usage, due to the ever-changing technology, primarily hyphenation, right now. Emdashes and endashes are a giant PITA, as we can never know whence the book will go (i.e., a device that DOES hyphenate, even if schizophrenically, like the Nook, or one that does NOT the K1-K3's)...and as we have folks who have come from all walks of life here, on both sides of the counter (us and the customers), we try very hard to refrain from correcting anyone. We don't, unless contracted, perform proofreading or editing services; if we tried to fix every wrong thing that came through the door, I'd be bankrupt in a week. We see some mighty scary writing in here (and some amazingly GOOD, too, I must say!).

And you guys already suffered through my mini-tantrum about the dreaded 4-dot "ellipsis." ARGGGHHHHH.

I am glad if I have been able to provide you with a truly useful link; so much of what is out there on the Net is such garbage, when I find little treasures like that, which I can give to my clients (or other good folks), I like to hang on to them.

HTH,
Hitch

[sellew]

For anyone interested in knowing about punctuation rules from a rigorous and funny perspective , I recommend Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss.

[meme]

Originally Posted by Hitch

IF you're interested:

In US-English, the comma goes inside the quote, even if the original quoted matter did not have the comma; in Brit/Can English, it goes outside.

I just don't get that. I could never figure out why the comma would go inside the quote, especially since you mention colons, etc. don't go inside quotes. I wonder what the reasoning was behind this.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by meme

I just don't get that. I could never figure out why the comma would go inside the quote, especially since you mention colons, etc. don't go inside quotes. I wonder what the reasoning was behind this.

It's probably related to manual typesetting, and the "rule" is that low punctuation (comma, period) go before high punctuation (quote marks). I don't know the exact reason for this rule, is it just aesthetic? something practical about the handling of lead types?

[harriska2]

I'm using the microspell and it gets the job done.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Jellby

It's probably related to manual typesetting, and the "rule" is that low punctuation (comma, period) go before high punctuation (quote marks). I don't know the exact reason for this rule, is it just aesthetic? something practical about the handling of lead types?

IMHO--and this really is complete opinion, no data--it's aesthetic. I think it looks better to the eye, a smoother...flow, or transition, for lack of a better word. I mean, compare these: (hey, if people can post questions about html and css utterly unrelated to Sigil, I can post typographic stufferooni, too.)

"...and I thought she said," he continued

"...and I thought she said", he continued.

To me, the eye continues more naturally, from the lower case letters in "said" to the comma, then to the quotation marks, in an upward-curve, than it does when the eye goes from the lower-case to the quotation marks to the comma, then on to the lower-case letters in "he."

BUT...that's just my $.02. I vaguely recall something from my student-journalism days (yes, we were still using quill pens then, ha!) about setting lead, but...I can't bring it to the grey-matter now.

Hitch

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by Hitch

(hey, if people can post questions about html and css utterly unrelated to Sigil, I can post typographic stufferooni, too.)

Hitch

I think it's all relevent to Sigil - its all about producing better epubs which is Sigil's raison d'etre ( let the spell checkers get their teeth into that! )


I suspect there's an easy regex for flipping ", with ," throughout a book, and also one for eliminating the 4 dot ellipses that you dislike.

PS I note that google chrome will spell check this post for me only in US English, or in Australian English! ( g'day sport, ) but not in real English - US bias , or what !

as & when Sigil does get an English spell checker, please remember who invented the language :-)

[Rand Brittain]

Indeed, I'm sure regexes can do it, but it would be nice to have a plugin that can run the correct 10 or 20 regexes needed to make all the changes in a row so I don't have to do them all manually.

[cybmole]

manually is safer, at first, then use replace all once it looks safe. I can't think of instances where you would NOT want the 2 character swap ", to ," to take place but you never know. also some books have curly quotes, some straight, some single, some double so may have to be done on a book by book basis.

actually no need for regex, just
find ",
replace ,"
or vice verse should work, in code view across all files

[Rand Brittain]

But I'd also want to replace ‘ with “, replace “ with ‘ (this actually requires four steps where I first switch them both to different unused symbols before switching them to each other), replace ” with some symbol, then start replacing all the instances of ’ that don't need to remain as they are with ”. Once you're done, replace that last symbol with ’.

Even when this is done, you'll still have a few errors left, such as when somebody is transliteratin’ some sort o’ accent, which won't be right, so you'll need to manually check over the whole book—there's no avoiding it!

But being able to do those first ten steps or so with just a few clicks would make the process a lot faster.

[cybmole]

http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/

i think it is already a calibre plug-in - or the basis of one.

dunno how easy to add to sigil

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by meme

I just don't get that. I could never figure out why the comma would go inside the quote, especially since you mention colons, etc. don't go inside quotes. I wonder what the reasoning was behind this.

As I recall from English class a long time ago. The period and comma would look like they are separated by a space if you put them after the quote mark. There purpose would thus be lost on the reader as it would look like the period was just hanging out there in space. This is particularly true of typewriters that had monospaced fonts. The reasoning was related to business letter writing on a typewriter.