Smart Type - Correctly curved quotation marks

by Matt Browne


Smart Type is a utility that can greatly improve the look of any DTP (or text editor) document.

You may have noticed that instead of using standard, straight, quotes (" ", ' '), in most books, magazines and professional documents they use ones that curve inwards or outwards ( ,  ). Also, instead of having the letters f and i, or f and l, disjointed (fi, fl) they are often joined (, ). Smart Type allows these effects to be produced without any effort in your documents. Just type as normally and Smart Type will do the rest!

The effects of Smart Type, when used with outline fonts, can improve the look
of a document immensely. (It wont look so impressive if youre viewing this
in the system font!)

For example, instead of:
   "This text flows to infinity," said the cucumber.
   Programmer's Reference Manual

You get:
   This text ows to innity, said the cucumber.
   Programmers Reference Manual

Smart Type is a relocatable module. It provides various Star (*) Commands that allow you to control it. These are documented later.

A Front End to the module is also included, and this is loaded when you click on the !SmartType icon in the RISC User master menu. It allows you to control the modules features from inside the desktop.

When you first load the module or load up the !SmartType application, they are set to support both smart quotes ( and ) and  and . Just type into your text editor or word processor as normal, and Smart Type will organise when the quotes should go inwards or outwards, and merge f and i and f and l automatically.

Each of these features can be turned on and off independently of each other.

The Smart Type Front End is loaded by double-clicking on the !SmartType icon. It will place an icon on the icon bar. If the icon is slabbed in and orange, at least one of Smart Types facilities are active. If the icon is slabbed out, none of Smart Types facilities are active.

Clicking on the icon with Menu brings up the Smart Type menu. It allows you to turn on and off Smart Types facilities. Anything that is ticked is active. Just click on the relevant menu option to toggle whether the facility is on or not.

If you click on the icon with Select or Adjust, the Smart Type module is toggled between being totally functional and not.

To quit the application, select Quit from the Icon Bar menu. If you move to the menu to the right of the Quit entry, another submenu will be displayed. Choosing All will quit both the Front End AND remove the Smart Type module from memory. Choosing Front end will quit the Front End but leave the Smart Type module as it is.

Smart Type Module
The module provides four Star (*) Commands for controlling its features. These are as follows:

*SmartStatus : This command shows the current status of the SmartType module. It details whether the smart quotes,  and  support are active or not.

Each of the other three commands should be postfixed On or Off depending
on whether you want to turn the feature on or off.

*SmartQuotes : This command turns the modules smart quotes facility on or off.
*SmartFI : This command turns the modules  support facility on or off.
*SmartFL : This command turns the modules  support facility on or off.

Limitations of Smart Type
Smart Type works very well, but it cannot replace a real smart quotes facility inside a Desktop Publisher or word processor. This is because Smart Type doesnt have access to your whole document, so may occasionally get the direction of quotes wrong after you have repositioned the cursor.

Smart Type requires a Latin alphabet to be selected. (This is the default, so if you dont know whether you have a Latin alphabet selected, you probably have.)

Some fonts may not have any definitions for smart quotes,  and . In this case, the relevant features will have to be turned off while using them.

 Copyright RISC User Magazine 1996

