Hey there!
Just another post describing an issue where I noticed something not working quite as intended. I use Scrivener 3 for Windows on the latest update.
With your newest update applied (Version: 3.1.2.0 (1812589) 64-bit - 18 Oct 2022), I went to convert some copied text’s quotes to smart quotes. Now, I did take the time to read through your changelog when it updated. The log mentions, “The menu commands in Edit ▸ Transformations ▸ to convert straight quotes to smart quotes and the reverse now apply to all documents loaded in a Scrivenings session when no text is selected.”
It’s that “when no text is selected” part that I’m having issues with. I selected the text with the straight quotes, went up to Edit > Transformations, and selected the conversion to smart quotes. The problem, as it says on the tin (and the title above), is that it didn’t seem to care that I selected some text. It went ahead and applied smart quotes to every single document in my project throughout the manuscript.
I tested this a few ways, to make sure I wasn’t just… not doing something or doing something wrong. But in an entirely different folder in the manuscript, a file had text that read as such:
“’bout an hour and a half.”
and another line in another file that read:
“‘Brother?’”
These are the proper direction of the smart quotes; one is a contraction based apostrophe that is foreshortening the word “about” and the other is a quoted phrase… both inside dialogue double-quotes.
However, after selecting text and using the transformation, the file with the “Brother” line (which wasn’t even the file/folder I was typing in at the time) was likewise transformed to appear as such:
“’Brother?’”
I know, it doesn’t seem like a huge deal… but I try to be as grammatically correct as possible with my punctuation. And granted, I know there’s next to no editor that will actually pick up on the distinction of what I’m doing… so I do often find myself manually changing that “’ to a “‘ in scenarios where I’m having a person quote something inside dialogue.
But if the Transformation is going to ignore my selected text and simply transform everything regardless… well, I don’t think that was the intent of the change/refinement. The problem then becomes that it makes me go through my entire document, searching for "’ and to fix all the ones that I’d purposefully turned around.
For reference, I usually do the manual change by entering a space between the " and the text, then placing the ’ next to the text (which places the ’ facing the correct direction), then deleting the space.
I do like the idea of just… blanket applying the smart quotes to an entire project. It saves me from going to each individual scene-file in my chapter-folders and repeating the transformation process. But since it’s not adhering to your “when no text is selected” (which implies it should only change selected text if text is selected)… it makes it about the same amount of work as not using it at all.
Is this a bug or some form of setting that’s disregarding the “only affect highlighted/selected text”? It it’s the former, I can wait for a patch and simply hold off on using the transformations unless I’m sure I want it to apply to my entire project no matter what’s selected. If it’s the latter, I have no problems tweaking some settings.
Please let me know!
Thanks!