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• • July 12, 2011 at 9:49 am #60031
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I work with six different Indian languages and when we receive the translated material, I am responsible for formatting the material. Often times with quotation marks, our Indian keyboarders will forget to add the corresponding opening or closing quotation marks. Currently I have to run a search for opening quotation marks and then visually scan the text to make sure the corresponding closing quotation mark is there and then vice versa for closing quotation marks. I will then highlight the quotation mark that has a missing “partner” in red so as to alert the Indian keyboarder to the error so that he/she can correct this. I know there MUST be a way to do this using the GREP search but neither myself or our company computer tech has been able to figure it out.

    In the Kannada Indian language, an opening quotation mark would be ëë or a double e-umlaut. (Obviously I am using a Kannada font called Chandana and in that font, it shows as a double opening quotation mark. But in an English font such as Times New Roman, it show as the double e-umlaut.) The closing double quotation mark in the Kannada font is íí or a double acute i.

    How do I search ëë (an opening Kannada quotation mark) that is not followed by íí (a Kannada closing quotation mark) before the next ëë (opening Kannada quotation mark) and have InDesign highlight that in red? And how do I do the opposite of searching for íí that is not preceeded by ëë?

    If I could figure this out, it would save myself and our proofreader a TREMENDOUS amount of time! And thanks in advance for ANY help.

  • July 12, 2011 at 10:20 am #60032
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    You can't really use grep to search for something that isn't there, like a closing quotation mark. The “Quality Assurance” panel in Blatner Tools (blatnertools.com) does this kind of search… quote marks or parentheses or brackets that are not closed.

  • July 12, 2011 at 11:27 am #60033
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    @David,

    Well, I didn't think so either, however, I came across a GREP search that our IT guy was able to customize using the Positive/Negative Lookbehind/Lookahead to do this very thing for opening and closing parenthesis. Here is how I do that …

    For missing closing parenthesis:

    • Find what: ((?=[^)]+?()
    • Change to: $0
    • Change Format: + stroke color: C=15 M=100 Y=100 K=0

    For missing opening parenthesis I have to do this in two steps but it still works.

    Step 1:

    • Find what: )[^(]+?)
    • Change to: $0
    • Change Format: + stroke color: C=15 M=100 Y=100 K=0

    Step 2:

    • Find what:)[^(]+?(?=))
    • Change to: $0
    • Change Format: + stroke color: [None]

    Using the search for the missing closing parenthesis as an example, when I try to replace the opening parenthesis with ëë (the Kannada language keystroke for an opening quotation mark) and the closing parenthesis with íí (the Kannada language keystroke for a closing quotation mark), the search does not work.

    And by the way, thanks for the link. I'll definitely be checking that out! Our office is one where everyone is so used to working harder and not smarter and I'm TRYING to get them all on board with really learning and utilizing InDesign to it's fullest, but it's really hard to teach old dogs new tricks. Can you believe I am the only person even using GREP searches? We even have some who don't use templates of regular styles!?! But I have a feeling, once they see how much more productive my work is becoming, I'll win them over. So thanks for ANY help with this!

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