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Topic: In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"  (Read 6256 times) previous topic - next topic
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In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Since I kinda prefer typographic punctuation, I was wondering if doing that in your music library, too, could bring up any problems I haven't thought of yet -- like iPod might not support it, or maybe Windows can't show them correcty…

Here is an example:

“Summer’s Almost Gone”

instead of

"Summer's Almost Gone"

I know it's way easier and less complicated using the regular straight quotes and avoiding unnecessary mistakes, and I can't see any reasonable advantages apart from style, but I just had to think about it.  And since you rarely see people using typographic punctuation, I'm curious what you guys think and if anyone else has been considering.

Thanks!

PS:  I'm on a Mac, and I use iTunes.
PPS:  And, yes, it doesn't really look good with exactly all typefaces (see this forum), but it does in iTunes (Lucida).

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #1
... I'm curious what you guys think and if anyone else has been considering.

Thanks!

PS:  I'm on a Mac, and I use iTunes.
PPS:  And, yes, it doesn't really look good with exactly all typefaces (see this forum), but it does in iTunes (Lucida).


In addition to some typefaces not looking the best, you also have to consider the portability aspect of it too.
For example, Some locale settings may not recognize the typographical punctuation that you may prefer. Those systems may find the file unreadable, read with a corrupt name and/or tag information if it's included in the metadata, or just show a funky character or box in place of the offending character.

If you are only using apple products, and it works for you, I say more power to you.
However, if you ever decide to update to a new player, or have to revert to an older player, the issue above may apply to you then.

Hope this gives you a little insight as to why I dislike that style of punctuation, espically the back-tick character " ` "(for lack of a better word). Often typed by using shift+tilde on std PC-104 keyboards.

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #2
I make use of Unicode in my collection (such as smart quotes, or names like Zdeněk Košler) and I have no problem with my ipod.  It has displayed everything just fine (although I haven’t made too much use of anything beyond what you’d find in Western/Eastern Europe).

I can’t speak for Windows or itunes, but it works fine with Amarok (and using Taglib for dealing with tags).  I think curly quotes (including apostrophe) look much nicer, and I wouldn’t have it any other way for my music collection.

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #3
The quote marks you prefer are simply different characters from amoung the possible characters of a typeface. They, in particular, are widely recognized, but by no means universally supported. Those character possibilities exists in every typeface, but may be left blank, e.g identical to character 0141 in “standard” typefaces, or may be assigned something totally different, such as a line drawing, in others.

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #4
If you use Unicode fonts, as is standard with all recent OS's it shouldn't be a problem. Finally all the punctuation is included in a standard location. I do DTP and have suffered (and still suffer) all manner of hassles in converting typographic punctuation from one format to another. But media players should all be recent enough not to suffer the legacy problems of ASCII days. And especially in Macs, where Steve Jobs did care enough about typography to build it into the OS at an early stage, unlike Bill Gates who didn't give a damn until very recently in the development of Windows. Too bad they don't have a place on the standard keyboard, otherwise I'd be typing them now... but that's a hardware issue.

However, while apostrophes are certainly necessary, quote marks don't seem to come up too much as part of song titles.

Also my daughter has a lot of Chinese MP3s which she transfers to her phone and player from an XP PC. Not iTunes though,  but they display fine in all soft and hardware players. And if you can display Chinese, anything else is trivial.

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #5
Thank you, guys!  I didn't even expect that much feedback.

I am considering each reply here, but I might go for it.  It's not that much work anyway with a good tagger, and the risk seems not very high.  French, Croatian, Chinese, Japanese, and the likes all work well for me already on any applicable system.  I'll also stick with Mac and iTunes/iPod whatsoever -- I'm pretty sure about that.

Thanks again!


In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #7
$replace(%field%, ", “," ,” ) would do the trick for a metadata field in foobar2000.

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #8
$replace(%field%, ", “," ,” ) would do the trick for a metadata field in foobar2000.

May I correct? That doesn't convert quotes at the beginning and at the end of %field%. This should do:

Code: [Select]
$trim($replace( %field% , ", “," ,” ))


In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #9
No, you may not correct.   

Haha! Thanks ojdo.

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #10
Yeah, thanks, that's probably it, but I have a Mac.  And foobar2000 -- Windows, right?  And there are not many quotation marks anyway.

I'm using Tune•Instructor here which is a pretty good Tagger for the Macintosh.  And it's already on -- probably for a couple more hours.  Ratatat tat tat…

The tricky part is rather phrases like –Rock ‘n’ Roll– or –You ‘n’ Me– and Italian short forms like –‘Na voce, ‘na chitarra e ‘o poco ‘e luna– and some French stuff.  Because simply replacing the –'– with an –’– won't do it here as you need an opening one (–‘–).  All the others like –let’s– or –Barry White’s– should be fine though.

We'll see what it looks like and how many tracks I have to correct manually afterwards.

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #11
In my personal experience in general smart quotes are more trouble than they're worth, especially when considering portability from place to place. I don't know if things are better specifically when it comes to music, but on the web they seem to not work as often as they do...

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #12
With Windows and Foobar2000 no problem at all. I even use those special characters in file names because usually I tag first and then mass move/rename the files with file operations’.

Quote
Too bad they don't have a place on the standard keyboard, otherwise I'd be typing them now... but that's a hardware issue.

Not necessarily. You only need to modify your software keyboard layout to include them. There’s Microsoft’s Keyboard Layout Creator for Windows and Xmodmap and friends for Linux. Don’t know about Mac.

Quote
The tricky part is rather phrases like –Rock ‘n’ Roll

Since it’s basically a short form of »Rock and Roll« and the usual character for indicating omitted characters/parts of words is the apostrophe it should be »Rock ’n’ Roll« – with an apostrophe each for the omitted a and d. I have no idea about Italian but your examples are all omissions as well, aren’t they? Then I guess a simple replacing operation should be enough because no opening and closing is going on like with quotations.

Btw: By far the prettiest quotation marks are guillemets, »these guys« and ›those guys‹. They’re not used in English, though …

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #13
Actually, you might be right.  I didn't really think about it.  Which would also mean that you never actually need the opening form "‘", but only closing "’" as an apostrophe, except when being used as single quotation marks.  I will also check back some more sources.  Thanks for that!

Yeah, but they don't really look good in this connection I feel.  Also, you absolutely come across guillemets in (at least older) English books, and they are sometimes used in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, but the other way around, too: «_».  I definitely have some books here.

In your library: using “smart quotes” instead of "straight"

Reply #14
$replace(%field%, ", “," ,” ) would do the trick for a metadata field in foobar2000.

May I correct? That doesn't convert quotes at the beginning and at the end of %field%. This should do:

Code: [Select]
$trim($replace( %field% , ", “," ,” ))



Could you explain how to use this in fb2k? I'd like to take my music and run it through this, saving the updated smart-quote tags back to the file.

(And as an aside, can I use a similar script to add a leading 0 to track numbers from 1-9 that don't have it?)

Thanks!