https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=128270
Issue ID: 128270
Issue Type: DEFECT
Summary: m-dash and n-dash entry requires superfluous
leading/trailing space to autocorrect
Product: Writer
Version: 4.1.6
Hardware: All
OS: All
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: Normal
Priority: P5 (lowest)
Component: editing
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
Target Milestone: ---
This relates to Issue ID 61326 but, in my opinion, that ID's documentation is
misleading as it includes a failure to understand formatting rules used by all
major publishing houses (who, in the case on en-dash, all conform to English
language rules).
Professional publication almost always uses publishing houses (an insignificant
number of professional authors finance their own private printing of their
work). Therefore, in effect, all authors must follow the rules set by their
choice of publishing house. This applies to all types of work including fiction
but, ESPECIALLY, to factual works such as scientific books and articles
(usually called "papers" or "learned papers").
While, unhelpfully, publishing houses are not fully consistent as their rules
go, they are with regard to the en-dash. En-dash is used as a separator in
place of " to ", to signifify a range (e.g. 1920 to 1930 can be written as
1920–1930). However, while the word "to" MUST be surrounded by spaces, the
en-dash MUST NOT be surrounded by spaces. NO SPACES are allowed by publishing
houses when using en-dash to indicate a range. In addition, and seemingly
contrary to what is said in case ID 61326, en-dash has NO OTHER FUNCTION except
as a range indicator. The en-dash indicator can be used WHENEVER a range is
indicated, so can occur between two numbers or between two words, such as
"July–November" (I am a professional author and a professional teacher of
English.)
Therefore, when one has to enter any space in order to cause autoreplace to
change a double hypen (--) to an en-dash (–), since the space(s) added are NOT
replaced, the author is required to backtrack and edit out the superfluous
spaces that, if present NEVER comply with publishing house rules. This is true
BOTH for a leading space (used in conjunction with the double hyphen to allow
autorplace to recognise the double hypen as requiring replacement) and for a
trailing space (entry of which triggers the autoreplace). This is work for the
author and the function of a word processor should be to replace unnecessary
work.
Thus, my proposal is that the autocorrect function to insert n-dash (–) should
be intiated by entering just a double hyphen (--) OR it should replace any of "
--" (space hyphen hypen),"-- " (hyphen hypen space), and " -- "space hyphen
hypen space), with JUST the n-dash (–) and no leading space.
At present, the autocorrect function for n-dash serves to implement a
grammatical error on users (n-dash properly uses no leading or trailing spaces)
and I suggest that the forced imposition of an error on a user's work is not
good practice.
Note also that if some users might object to this, that would be equivalent to
objecting to software maintaining any grammatical requirement, such as a
leading capital letter following the use of a period mark (in the UK called a
"full stop"). If people wish to insert a space, this would require that they
type a double space before a double hyphen; the traing space and double hyphen
would autocorrect to an n-dash leaving the leading space unchanged.
Of course, there would be no issue if users opt to be non-conformant with
English language rules but I see that as managed by the typing of double spaces
either before or after en-dash, which would allow their inappropriate
non-conformance with English language rules while not preventing OpenOffice to
be programmed to conform to the rules, as per my proposal.
Regards
Paul
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