Smart space management for double space sentences

[Alan]

I have Tools > Auto Correct Options Smart space management checked and clicking the Rules button, Allow double space is checked. I am expecting this to automatically maintain a double space between sentences when cutting & pasting. When I Paste a word or two at the beginning of a sentence with a double space, that space is reduced to one space. Should the Paste operation maintain the double space or set the space to double when inserting immediately after a period?

[admin]

You are right that you are expecting the "Smart space management" options affect the Delete/Cut/Paste operations. The "Two spaces between sentences" option means that Atlantis is supposed to maintain two spaces between sentences if these two spaces were originally inserted by the author of this document. But this option does not mean that Atlantis will insert extra space character between two sentences if these sentences are separated with a single space character. In other words, this option means that both 1 and 2 spaces are allowed between sentences.

Yes, the second space should not be removed if you paste immediately before the first word of the next sentence. For example, if we have the following text (asterisks mean spaces between sentences):

This is Sentence 1.**And this is Sentence 2.

and you paste something immediately before “And”, two spaces after “Sentence 1.” are maintained.

Also if you select “And”, and cut or delete it, there should be still two spaces between “Sentence 1.” and “this”:

This is Sentence 1.**this is Sentence 2.

This is how the next release of Atlantis will work. Thanks.

[filmchick]

Bumping this up from the dark ages for another question:
Is there a way to /require/ two spaces between sentences with Atlantis?

[admin]

Sorry, but there is no way to instruct Atlantis to "require" two spaces between sentences. You can have two spaces between sentences only if you check each and every sentence in your document manually. You could use the "Find / Replace" feature of Atlantis. Just choose the "Edit | Find..." menu command, type ". ^$" (a fullstop plus a space character plus <any letter>) in the "Find" box, and click the "Find Next" button to find sentences separated with a single space.

[Robert]

Is there a way to /require/ two spaces between sentences with Atlantis?

*
Hi,
1. Open the "Tools | AutoCorrect Options..." dialog.
2. Type a period plus 1 space character in the "Replace" box.
3. Type a period plus 2 space characters in the "Replace With" box.
4. Check the "AutoCorrect as you type" option.
5. OK out of the dialog.
Atlantis will automatically replace any sequence of "period+ 1 space character" with "period+ 2 space characters".

Note that sentences can end with an exclamation or a question mark.
You can add 2 other replacement pairs to your AutoCorrect entries:

!+space > !space+space
?+space > ?+space+space

Cheers,
Robert

[kenfhill84083]

How would I replace ."_ with ."__ the underscores represent spaces. I want 2 spaces after ."

Same with ?"_ and !"_

I cannot seem to make autocorrect give me the result I want.

Using Atlantis 4.2.1.1

[admin]

If you mean replacing “.<space>” with “.<space><space>” as you type, your “replace .. with ...” pair seems to work correctly in the latest version 4.2.2.3: as soon as I type a space after a period, I get two spaces instead.

If you need to correct spacing in existing documents (i.e. “after you type”), you can enable the wildcard search, specify the below “Find what” pattern:

Code: Select all

([.!?]) ([!^w])

and replace with:

Code: Select all

\1  \2

This would deal with sentences terminated with fullstops, exclamation and question marks.

The following "Find what" pattern would also cover cases when there is a double quote after the fullstop or the exclamation/question mark:

Code: Select all

([.!?]"{0,1}) ([!^w])

[kenfhill84083]

Thanks for your helpful tip. I got got hijacked onto a different project right after your answer.

[kenfhill84083]

The following "Find what" pattern would also cover cases when there is a double quote after the fullstop or the exclamation/question mark:

Code: Select all

([.!?]"{0,1}) ([!^w])

Followup question. When using this regex code (which works great) I am left with 2-space-things like "Dr. Smith", "cp. asdf" , "Gen. 3:15" - where 2 spaces are not generally used. That makes sense.

But Is there a simple way to clean up these types of issues?

[admin]

There is no search pattern that would ignore the above abbreviations. You need to review each reported item individually, and do replace only when appropriate.