Feature Request: Punctuation Conversion

[sls1005]

Quotation marks as used in Hong Kong and Taiwan are 「 」 (outer or normal) and 『 』 (inner). And that used in China are “ ” (outer or normal) and ‘ ’ (inner). This is the most significant difference in their punctuation. I use this app when translating my projects, and I would have to convert these marks manually. This conversion can be implemented as string replacement. I think such functionality would be very useful in this app.

Also, the UI layout feels a little illogical to me. I would expect all buttons of file-related functionalities to be grouped together, while the buttons of text-field-related functionalities to be as close to the text field itself as possible. Due to psychological reasons, human beings would likely focus on the center of the screen and ignore the things at the edges of it, so buttons with most important and frequently used functionalities should be closer to the center of the screen.

Here are the code points:

「 : U+300C
」 : U+300D
『 : U+300E
』 : U+300F
“ : U+201C
” : U+201D
‘ : U+2018
’ : U+2019

P.S.: I think ASCII quotation marks (', ", `) should not be converted, as they all can be used as opening and closing marks and are hard to distinguish.

[fei0316]

Thank you for your suggestions. For the quotation marks, I believe this is something I have considered doing but forgot about. Some problems are: many do use ASCII quotation marks in Chinese, how to handle mixing of English and Chinese quotes, and there are also full-width (全角) quotation marks to handle. Are you aware of libraries that handle this?

About the UI, I agree that it is not the most intuitive. I will think about how to do an overhaul. Feel free to let me know if you have any ideas.

[sls1005]

「 (U+300C), 」 (U+300D), 『 (U+300E), 』 (U+300F) are displayed as full-width for me. They also have half-width counterparts with different code points in Unicode, but I think the half-width version are invented and only used by Japanese people as an alternative for the full-width version. I believe that Japanese people normally use full-width as we do (or at least the same code points), and that the half-width version was only included in Unicode for compatibility or historical reasons. Some systems may render 「 (U+300C), 」 (U+300D), 『 (U+300E), 』 (U+300F) as half-width, but I think the code points are generally same across CJK regions.

“ (U+201C), ” (U+201D), ‘ (U+2018), ’ (U+2019) are displayed as half-width for me, and I think they don't have full-width counterparts with different code points in Unicode. Both English and Chinese speakers use the same code points for these mark. Some systems may render them as full-width, but I think the code points are same.

I recall that there are also full-width counterparts with different code points for ASCII marks like " in Unicode, but I think they are also only included for compatibility reasons and are not in use.

For these who mix the use of 「」 and “”, they must either have a reason (e.g. inlining English in Chinese) or don't care, so the punctuation-mark-conversion should be optional (and minimal) to avoid over-conversion, similar to the term-conversion (用詞轉換). There should be an option to do that.

I think punctuation is not related with script, but with region, so the basic rule should be:

CN to HK or TW:

  “” -> 「」
  ‘’ -> 『』

HK or TW to CN:

  「」 -> “”
  『』 -> ‘’

And no, I don't think anyone would make a library for such a task. But I think String.replace() would be enough.

For the UI, I would place the buttons like "clear" and "convert" right after (i.e., to the bottom of) the text field, because that's where the user's attention and fingers would be around after pasting something to the field. And I would add a "copy" button instead of automatic copying. I would place the buttons for opening and saving files either beside them or at the bottom of the screen, but more important is that these two file-related buttons should be close to each other.

[sls1005]

For other marks such as ，, 。, the same, there's a half-width version, but people in all regions normally only use full-width symbols. Japanese or Simplified Chinese typefaces would render it closer to bottom-left, and Taiwanese or Hongkongese typefaces would render it centered, but code points are same.