Odd keyboard behavior

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:27:05 -0400, "Dosick, Daniel (GE EntSol, Security)" 
<Dan.Dosick at ge.com> wrote:

>FM8 (patch 277), WinXP pro
> 
>This one's pretty bizarre: 
>
>As of a couple of days ago (I think), when I type a single or double
>quotation mark (' or ") in Frame 8, a question mark appears rather than
>the quotation mark character. 
>
>Changing the font has no effect. All the other keys do just what they're
>supposed to do. 
>
>This is only happening in FM8, not in FM7.1 or in any other application
>I've tried. 
>
>Any ideas?

It's a Frame 8 bug; the "Smart Quotes" feature is broken.
As you know, Frame began using Unicode internally in FM8.
Pre-Unicode versions, like FM7, used the character set in
Windows Code Page 1252, ANSI, instead,  The two character
sets are basically identical for most code points, *except*
for characters from U+0080 through U+009F.  In Unicode,
those code points are the "C1 control characters" and do
not display.  In ANSI, they are a collection of symbols
that include the curly quotes among others.

In FM7, using "Smart Quotes" and typing " resulted in
either character 0x93 (left) or 0x94 (right), depending
on context.  In Unicode, those code points are not
displayable, but Frame didn't convert them to the right
Unicode characters, U+201C and U+201D, as it did for
most other characters in that zone.  Instead, it leaves
the old ANSI in place, and displays a question mark.

Interestingly, if you use Mif2Go to convert that file
to either HTML or Word RTF, the characters are correct
in the output.  How come?  For HTML, browsers still
support the ANSI values, which Mif2Go passes through,
even though they are not valid Unicode.  For RTF, Word
still uses the ANSI set itself; in fact, Mif2Go has to
convert the other Unicode chars back to ANSI to make
Word happy.  But that doesn't help if you make a PDF;
you still get the question marks.


What you need to do is, first, turn off Smart Quotes;
in Format > Document > Text Options... uncheck the box
at the top left and Apply.  In FM8, it's dead; bury it.

Now, if you type a ", you get a ", the straight one.
If you want the curly one, type Ctrl-q Shift-R for
the left one, or Ctrl-q Shift-S for the right.  There
are other ways, but that's the fastest and simplest
method.  The pre-8 method of Ctrl-Alt-` and Ctrl-Alt-'
does *not* work; it gives you single quotes in FM8.

For single quotes, it's simpler.  Type a `, and get a
left curly single quote; type a ', and get a right.
Ctrl-q Shift-T and Ctrl-q Shift-U also work, if you
are using a non-English keyboard.  If you want the 
actual straight character versions, you have to use 
Ctrl-` and Ctrl-'.  That's the same as in FM7.

Other characters in the 80-9F range are handled more
gracefully.  If you use the Ctrl-q sequences, you get
the real Unicode character, mostly in the U+2000 area.
Ctrl-q is your new best friend.  ;-)

HTH!

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>  http://www.omsys.com/