hey, looks like a new series from bowerbird! oh goodie! :+) doublequotes are easy, here on the simple fork of the road. here's a program i wrote to convert and check doublequotes:

http://zenmagiclove.com/dqinsanity.py

it'll list any paragraphs that have doublequote problems. it also lists any paragraphs that you've marked with the .zml tag for "dialog continues in next paragraph". the program now works on the "betty lee" book, because that's the one that i happened to be working on recently. and, thanks to this program, that file no longer has any problems in it. (it started with a bunch which were wrong, not just in the o.c.r., but _originally_, in the p-book itself; sometimes the e-book is _more_ correct than the p-book!) if anyone still cares about doublequotes 2 weeks from today, remind me, and i'll rework the program to work on any text from the p.g. library, so you can really see the thing in action. and remind me 4 weeks from today, and i'll rework the code so you can feed it your own text, and it'll do its magic on that. because it's not "magic". it's just common sense, coded out... *** so the merry-go-round riders can talk about something new. i suggest em-dashes -- typographic? or double-dash? begin! -bowerbird p.s. and, after that, _ellipses_... use utf8? or three periods? and what about the 4-dot ellipse, what do we do about that? because if you want life to be hard, it's easy to make it hard. all you have to do is start caring about shit that don't matter.