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French punctuation in Pages

I wonder if anyone has seen the following problem already:

I just purchased Pages. I need to edit documents written in French. In French, quotation marks are not "" but two arrows, sort of like << and >>. Plus, there is a space after the open quote mark, e.g., << this quote >> and before the close quote.

Pages tells me that this sign is a form of a paragraph (in Special Characters). This is false.

Also, in French, colons and semi-colons and question marks have spaces before them, between the word and the punctuation mark.

Although I have gone through the Inspector in Pages to choose French as the language (Text + More + language), and also of course selected French as the language on the top right of the computer screen, still Pages will not apply French quotation marks or French punctuation.

Does this mean I have to go back to MS Word (which I would like to get away from)?

Je me demande si quelqu'un connaît la solution au problème suivant:

Je viens d'acheter Pages. Je travaille sur des documents écrits en français. En français, les guillemets ne sont pas des guillemets anglais "" mais des flèches << et >> . Qui plus est, il y a un espace après le guillemet ouvrant et avant le guillemet fermant.

Autre problème dans Pages: la ponctuation en français, pour le point-virgule et les deux points ( ; : ) et pour le point d'interrogation comporte un espace avant la marque de ponctuation.

Or, en dépit du choix de français comme langue dans Pages et la sélection du français en haut à droite de l'écran, Pages n'applique ni les guillemets français ni la ponctuation française.

Quelqu'un peut m'aider?

Merci d'avance.

Thomas

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Aug 8, 2009 4:35 AM

Best reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,276 points

Posted on Aug 8, 2009 5:16 AM

For French quotes, you need to be running Pages in French, either by setting the OS to French or doing File > Get Info > Languages on the Pages app icon and unchecking all boxes except French.

View in context

62 replies

Hellstan

Level 1

20 points

Aug 18, 2009 6:23 AM in response to fruhulda

Unfortunately, the program here should be language dependent.
This is what text apps are about, isn't it ?
Apple developers did not suppress the "~" because it was spanish
and not english.
And one humanly cannot waste his time typing spaces in a book
when needed, because it would mean repeating it thousands of times.
Word does it automatically, in french, Pages do not. It's a design flaw.

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,276 points

Aug 18, 2009 6:41 AM in response to Hellstan

tom : no.

It seems to work for me. I was able to replace ; or : with nbsp plus ; or : , entering the nbsp from Character Palette (00A0). What happens for you?

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Aug 18, 2009 6:43 AM in response to Hellstan

I hope you've told Apple your opinion by providing feedback to them. See Yvans earlier post.

Hellstan

Level 1

20 points

Aug 18, 2009 6:47 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

fruhulda : I did many times and I'm not the only one (John Lennon).
tom : I don't understand what you did. You mean you automatically
could create theses spaces for every occurrence of ";" or ":" ?
How ?

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Aug 18, 2009 7:18 AM in response to Hellstan

Go to Preferences > Auto Correction > click on + at the bottom > write ; > move to the left and write [space] ;

Thats it!

Hellstan

Level 1

20 points

Aug 18, 2009 7:25 AM in response to fruhulda

Already tried.
Does not work.
Only works when you press "Enter" after each ; or :
Which is obviously impossible…

Message was edited by: Hellstan

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Aug 18, 2009 7:30 AM in response to Hellstan

You always have to write something after to make it work. It could be a space or punctuation or a letter. It doesn't have to be Enter.

Hellstan

Level 1

20 points

Aug 18, 2009 7:38 AM in response to fruhulda

As said, it doesn't work.
Already tried every possible solution:
typing or not the space before, typing or niot the space after.
It does not work, period. 😉

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Aug 18, 2009 7:42 AM in response to Hellstan

When it doesn't work for you it might help if you tell us exactly how you did what is not working.

One thing could be that you in Auto Correction didn't press Enter or move to another line but left the last field selected. Then it doesn't work, at least not for me. When I pressed Enter so the blue selection line around the field disappeared it worked. Could it be so for you too?

Hellstan

Level 1

20 points

Aug 18, 2009 7:49 AM in response to fruhulda

Well, using apps since 1992, I'm pretty aware of how and why.
Believe me : it does not work.
Pity I cannot post a screen capture of my settings in Pages,
but I did exactly what you suggested even before you suggested
it.
And it does not work. 😉

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Aug 18, 2009 9:40 AM in response to Hellstan

To bad! What language are you using on your computer?

I use Swedish and so Pages'09 is in Swedish to. There are other issues that work in some languages but not in others. This could be one of those. If so do a bug report.

Hellstan

Level 1

20 points

Aug 18, 2009 9:45 AM in response to fruhulda

As said, french.
I did.

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Aug 18, 2009 10:08 AM in response to Hellstan

When I changed the language in System Preferences International to French and restarted Pages and told Auto Correction to put a space in front of the semicolon it worked!!!

Aug 18, 2009 10:09 AM in response to Hellstan

If you write a bug report, you have to be much more precise than that in what you are doing. Using auto-correct works for Tom. I took 30 seconds and tried it out, and it works for me too.

I readily believe that it does not work for you, but to be honest, I am not at all sure you set it up the right way. Unless you describe exactly what you did, no one will believe that it is a real bug.

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Aug 18, 2009 10:22 AM in response to fruhulda

Hello

our friend is not playing the fool.

I tested with the system set to French.

in auto correction I defined four pairs:

(1) : + noBreakSpace
(2) ; + noBreakSpace
(3) « + noBreakSpace
(4) noBreakSpace + »

Only the fourth one behaves correctly: the noBreakSpace is inserted before the closing chevrons when I type the staright double quote and a trailing space.

This one is perfect.

The three others are odd.

Same behavior if I replace noBreakSpace by standard space.
The problem is the same with parenthesis.

I repeat what I wrote in an other message, the easiest soluce is to let the program behave the default way then use Find-Replace on four/six cases to insert our required characters.

ProLexis edited by Diagonal is a third party tool doing a good job.
It's a must for professional use but it's not cheap: 307€ for French, 383€ for French + English.
There is also a light version "Petit ProLexis" : 99€ for French.

As I wrote, the light version costs quite the same than the full iWork.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France.) mardi 18 août 2009 19:21:04

French punctuation in Pages