"backward" smart quotes problem

Rajmahid · 02-01-2011, 02:50 PM

I just encountered, for the first time, an issue with quotation marks appearing inverted -- that is close quotes -- at the BEGINNING of a number of sentences in an ePub when I ran it through Calibre's "smarten punctuation" option. Whether converting to Mobi or just trying to smarten the punctuation marks in the original ePub in question, both formats keep giving the same "backward quote" results.

The book (public domain, reformatted and tweaked by a member here) to which I'm referring was obtained in the ePub books Humor section of the MobileRead Forum, and can be found at this link:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...+lucia+omnibus

I examined the ePub using Sigl's code view, but saw nothing obviously wrong. Any help with this perplexing issue would be greatly appreciated.

kovidgoyal · 02-01-2011, 02:54 PM

That can happen if the book has unbalanced quotes. i.e. an odd number of "

Rajmahid · 02-01-2011, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

That can happen if the book has unbalanced quotes. i.e. an odd number of "

Thanks for your very quick reply -- but could you clarify that "odd number of" for me? I'm not sure I follow you. An example would help.

Much appreciated!

kovidgoyal · 02-01-2011, 03:05 PM

"some text, "some quoted text"

Rajmahid · 02-01-2011, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

"some text, "some quoted text"

I must be wearing my stupid cap today, or just missed the point entirely. The quotes throughout the ebook seem consistently balanced -- i.e. nothing like you just pointed out. I'm attaching a screen capture of a typical page with the quotes issue and would be ecstatic if you could tell me if they seem unbalanced -- as I understand your example.

Better yet, here's a link to the ePub in question from MobileRead forum...if you have a few seconds, run it through Calibre's "smarten quotation" to see the dismal results:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...4&d=1266764614

And if you have a suggestion to any editing or reformatting I might engage in with something like Sigil, please let me know.

Sorry to be such a nuisance

kovidgoyal · 02-01-2011, 03:22 PM

You have to look through the entire document for unbalanced quotes, a particular section doesn't matter, once there is an unbalanced quote, all the remaining quotes become messed up.

Perkin · 02-01-2011, 03:26 PM

I opened the epub in sigil and done a search-count for quotes just in the first chapter - was 79, so a quote is missing from a paragraph somewhere (or from several).
(just because there may be an even number, doesn't guarantee they're matching pairs)

Use Sigil, and do a search for a quote mark, then just keep looking for the next one, and try to spot any sentences where one is missing, either from the beginning or end of speech/quote etc., then when you find one missing, add it, continue till you're happy.

Edit:
So continue through rest of book.

Rajmahid · 02-01-2011, 03:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

You have to look through the entire document for unbalanced quotes, a particular section doesn't matter, once there is an unbalanced quote, all the remaining quotes become messed up.

Ahhhh....

Of course, one unbalanced quote messes it up for the rest of them! Good old html.....

Thank you and Perkin for your assistance!

bfollowell · 02-03-2011, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

You have to look through the entire document for unbalanced quotes, a particular section doesn't matter, once there is an unbalanced quote, all the remaining quotes become messed up.

While this is mostly true, it isn't always necessarily the case. I've had Calibre convert a regular quote to the wrong smart quote and THAT was the only one that was off. In other words, there wasn't an imbalance until the one was incorrectly converted. I don't think this just happens our of the blue though. It almost always happens on a rare sentence or paragraph that starts with an open quote and then an em dash. I think this just confuses the conversion engine but I'm not sure why.

At least this has been my experience.

- Byron

kovidgoyal · 02-03-2011, 10:00 AM

Open a ticket and attach a test case demonstrating this behavior.

bfollowell · 02-03-2011, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Open a ticket and attach a test case demonstrating this behavior.

Will do. I haven't been too concerned with it since it happens so rarely. I'll keep an eye out for another occurrence and will open a ticket once I have a good example.

- Byron

Rylon · 02-05-2011, 03:05 PM

Rather than using calibre's smart quotes option, I decided to go old school and use sed. I wrote a sed script that does a good job of creating html smart quotes.

I'm attaching the file, to use it type

Code:

sed -f qscript.txt input file > output file

at a unix command prompt.

Note, as is, this script only works with GNU Sed. To get it to work with other versions of sed, simply remove all the comments aside from the first one.

What you'll end-up with is a file that uses escaped quotations using the numeric character reference. It'll also handle apostrophes and m-dashes. The script has been tested and used only on text files I got from Project Gutenberg and converted to html.

This script has a tendency to be under-inclusive. I suggest that you open up the new file and do a search for double and single quotes. If there aren't a lot, you can manually change them. If there are a lot, I dunno.

HarryT · 02-05-2011, 03:16 PM

Where is the attachment?

Rylon · 02-05-2011, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

Where is the attachment?

Apparently, still on my computer wondering why it hasn't been uploaded yet.

Rajmahid · 02-06-2011, 04:06 PM

Wish I had a script for Windows...it's a painstaking operation doing a search & replace for the quotes in the Lucia Omnibus

You'd think only a few chapters would suffer from this weird phenomenon that Calibre can't deal with, but it's ALL of them. 12 chapters are complete -- only 81 (!!!) to go.

The only relief is that I only have to manually fix the front-end quotes, Calibre correctly transforms the end-sentence smart quotes.

02-01-2011, 02:50 PM	#1
Rajmahid Enthusiast Posts: 34 Karma: 2584 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Kindle	"backward" smart quotes problem I just encountered, for the first time, an issue with quotation marks appearing inverted -- that is close quotes -- at the BEGINNING of a number of sentences in an ePub when I ran it through Calibre's "smarten punctuation" option. Whether converting to Mobi or just trying to smarten the punctuation marks in the original ePub in question, both formats keep giving the same "backward quote" results. The book (public domain, reformatted and tweaked by a member here) to which I'm referring was obtained in the ePub books Humor section of the MobileRead Forum, and can be found at this link: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...+lucia+omnibus I examined the ePub using Sigl's code view, but saw nothing obviously wrong. Any help with this perplexing issue would be greatly appreciated.

02-01-2011, 03:26 PM	#7
Perkin Guru Posts: 655 Karma: 64171 Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Kent, England, Sol 3, ZZ9 plural Z Alpha Device: Sony PRS-300, Kobo Aura HD, iPad (Marvin)	I opened the epub in sigil and done a search-count for quotes just in the first chapter - was 79, so a quote is missing from a paragraph somewhere (or from several). (just because there may be an even number, doesn't guarantee they're matching pairs) Use Sigil, and do a search for a quote mark, then just keep looking for the next one, and try to spot any sentences where one is missing, either from the beginning or end of speech/quote etc., then when you find one missing, add it, continue till you're happy. Edit: So continue through rest of book. Last edited by Perkin; 02-01-2011 at 03:28 PM. Reason: missed kovid's post while typing

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02-01-2011, 02:54 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,826 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	That can happen if the book has unbalanced quotes. i.e. an odd number of "

02-01-2011, 03:05 PM	#4
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,826 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	"some text, "some quoted text"

02-01-2011, 03:22 PM	#6
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,826 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	You have to look through the entire document for unbalanced quotes, a particular section doesn't matter, once there is an unbalanced quote, all the remaining quotes become messed up.

02-03-2011, 10:00 AM	#10
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,826 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Open a ticket and attach a test case demonstrating this behavior.

02-05-2011, 03:16 PM	#13
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Where is the attachment?

02-06-2011, 04:06 PM	#15
Rajmahid Enthusiast Posts: 34 Karma: 2584 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Kindle	Wish I had a script for Windows...it's a painstaking operation doing a search & replace for the quotes in the Lucia Omnibus You'd think only a few chapters would suffer from this weird phenomenon that Calibre can't deal with, but it's ALL of them. 12 chapters are complete -- only 81 (!!!) to go. The only relief is that I only have to manually fix the front-end quotes, Calibre correctly transforms the end-sentence smart quotes.