Re: Another take on the English apostrophe in Unicode

On Fri, June 5, William_J_G Overington wrote:

> I replied:

>> Would it be possible to have wordprocessing software where one
>> uses CONTROL APOSTROPHE for U+2019 and CONTROL SHIFT APOSTROPHE for U+02BC for input
[...]

> I am wondering whether some existing software packages
> might be able to be used for the character inputting part using customized
> keyboard short cuts.

There is a very good shortcut utility for Windows which doesnʼt modify the registry except to launch the app automatically:
http://utilfr42.free.fr/util/Clavier.php

Using this software, I tried, you can define CONTROL APOSTROPHE for U+2019 and CONTROL SHIFT APOSTROPHE for U+02BC for input.€After defining the shortcut by typing it, you will have to paste the character into the text editing field.
You can specify that these shortcuts work only in the word processing software you use, as you wish to. To achieve this, pick the “target”icon, drag and drop it into an open window of the target application, its name will be added in the bar and youʼll have to choose that the shortcut be enabled in this software.

You may even define that the shortcuts work with LEFT CONTROL only, in order to keep RIGHT CONTROL for other shortcuts with APOSTROPHE.
As CONTROL SHIFT is not easy enough to type for character input, Iʼd suggest to define CONTROL L for U+2019, and to add CONTROL SEMICOLON for U+2018. This is because on the square bracket keys, there are already control characters allocated on CONTROL shift state. On these keys you may however choose LEFT ALT or RIGHT ALT for a shortcut.

BTW: Clavier+ allows even to command the pointer and to enter mouse clicks, so that a shortcut can execute an action on the graphic interface of the app. This is very useful to add app shortcuts in apps that donʼt allow customising.
Itʼs free, and the interface can be switched to English. To download your copy:
http://utilfr42.free.fr/util/Clavier.php

> I have now thought of the alternative for now of being able to test what is
> in the text by using a special version of an open source font where there are
> distinctive glyphs one from the other for the two characters.

I discovered that when U+02BC is input by autocorrect in replacement of U+0027, and the current font does not contain U+02BC (for example Lucida Console), then U+02BC is displayed in the fall-back font (Courier New) and the font-setting is *not* altered. This way, you have the MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE displayed in a distinctive font at input. This is observed in Microsoft Word Starter, where every out-of-font character typed as such triggers the font-setting to fall-back, which is very annoying.

Best regards,
Marcel Schneider
Received on Mon Jun 15 2015 - 01:29:42 CDT