"Word Service" to change curly to straight quotes, etc

Inter-app workflows
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A common problem with Tinderbox action code not working is that Tinderbox is looking for “straight quotes” when the action code includes quotes, and oftentimes code copied from a forum like this one will end up with “curly quotes”.

DEVONthink provides a free utility – Word Services that can safely be installed on your Mac. Word Services has a number of text-modification utilities that are invoked from the macOS Services Menu.

Once Word Services is installed, use System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, in the “Text” section of that dialog, to activate whatever Word Service you want to use on your computer.

For example, I have these Word Services activated for my Services menu – applies to Safari, Tinderbox, etc. You can assign a shortcut (as shown) to the service, or not.

Screenshot of Safari (10-25-20, 8-44-25 AM)
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2 Likes
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I have this problem. However, I couldn’t get Word Services to fire from TBX. But I found that I could turn off smart quotes under Edit → Substitutions → Smart Quotes.
Also the document settings pane has a Smart Quotes toggle box under “Text” options. That turns them off universally.

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Cool idea. BTW, there are several options to consider to get around this.

  1. If you’re writing in the Inspector, TBX takes care of this for you, only using straight quotes
  2. If you use the “code” or “HTML” prototype, TBX takes care of this for you
  3. On any note, I often enable with prototypes, and set the $SmartQuotes to false. This will stop TBX from converting straight quotes to smart quotes.
  4. You can also use the Inspector Quickstamp to turn these on and off, quickly

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BONUS
4. if you use markdown, you may also want to turn off $SmartLinks; this will prevent TBX from converting URLs to active links. In some context, if a link is active it process properly when pushing out of Tinderbox (NOTE: this is NOT a TBX issue but rather the interface between TBX and the rendering processor you choose). I’ve yet to really nail down the source. “Me: Dr., It hurts when I do this. Dr: Stop doing that.” As I really don’t need active links in most of my text, I keep them off by default and turn the attribute on for specific notes.