I’m using Scrivener 2.8 (26284) for OS X. I’m having issues with Smart Quotes and Markdown, and I’m wondering if anyone else has dealt with this. In my text, I use italics to denote remote speakers - i.e. people on phones, generally. The problem is that I’m using Smart Quotes - but quotes with asterisks next to them (such as are required to denote italics in Markdown) don’t work properly in smart quotes. When I compile, they’re all ‘opening’ quotes regardless of whether they’re at the start or end, and regardless of whether the asterisk is before or after the smart quote.
Has anyone run across this problem and managed to solve it? I saw a tip online about dealing with emdash issues and smart quotes, but when I try their solution - copying smart quotes from the right place into the raw text - it doesn’t work. They become generic smart quotes which then compile incorrectly.
It could be worth considering not using smart quotes. MultiMarkdown handles smart quotes on its own, and I find it does a pretty good job of it (better, from what I see of the posts around here, than the Mac text engine seems to—for instance it doesn’t have this problem). And in fact if you have been using formats based on the “Basic MultiMarkdown” or “Basic Pandoc” compile formats, then all this time it has been straightening them for you so that these engines can handle the typography for you. Honestly I only very rarely think about typography while writing—the main exception is when I need to use inch or foot marks, and then you have to put a backslash in front of them.
There is another advantage in that if you use the actual quote characters in your text, then those pass through the Markdown engine unchanged, and can be less compatible with HTML and other formats. Leaving it up to the conversion engine will allow it to use the best syntax for each format internally.