Non-breaking spaces

[Dominique Pivard]

Hi!

I know how to *display* invisible characters such as spaces and
non-breaking spaces, but how do you actually *insert* non-breaking
spaces in your translation? The shortcut that works in Word (and in
most CAT tools I know), ie. Ctrl+Shift+space does nothing.

Thanks,

Dominique

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

Shift+Alt+Space on Mac.


Jean-Christophe Helary
----------------------------------------
fun: http://mac4translators.blogspot.com
work: http://www.doublet.jp (ja/en > fr)
tweets: http://twitter.com/brandelune

[Hans list]

Mon chêr,

Sur X SO c'est Alt+Espace.

[Dominique Pivard]

Thanks, J-C & Hans! Good to know there's a shortcut that works in OS
X. However, I was asking about Windows.

I'm taking advantage of J-C's presence here to ask the same question
about OmegaT: I can display non-breaking spaces via the View menu, but
how do I insert them (again, in Windows)?

Cheers,

Dominique

[Hans list]

Dominique Pivard wrote:
>
> Thanks, J-C & Hans! Good to know there's a shortcut that works in OS
> X. However, I was asking about Windows.

CafeTran Win is not supported here ;).

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On Dec 23, 2012, at 4:49 PM, Dominique Pivard <domi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm taking advantage of J-C's presence here to ask the same question
> about OmegaT: I can display non-breaking spaces via the View menu, but
> how do I insert them (again, in Windows)?

It seems Windows users are really handicapped when it comes to enter non standard characters.
There is a whole thread on the issue on the OmegaT user group. And I'm so glad I'm on Mac :)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/OmegaT/message/24537

[Dominique Pivard]

On 23 December 2012 10:15, Jean-Christophe Helary

<jean.christ...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It seems Windows users are really handicapped when it comes to enter non standard characters.
> There is a whole thread on the issue on the OmegaT user group. And I'm so glad I'm on Mac :)
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/OmegaT/message/24537

Thanks! However, I believe it is a pity no built-in solution has been
designed for OmegaT & CafeTran users, given that Windows is the most
widely used platform for them. Ctrl+Shift+space works in Wordfast Pro,
so it can't be a Java limitation.

FWIW, Wordfast Pro has an extensive list of special characters that
can be inserted via shortcuts (that are user-configurable):

http://screencast.com/t/gy56JgU6a6c

I guess a solution for Windows users (as a workaround) would be to use
an AutoHotKey script. In my videos, I use such a script to quickly
insert translations, and I have no problem inserting non-breaking
spaces (and I could use something similar to insert any Unicode
character via a keyboard shortcut).

Cheers,

Dominique

[Hans List]

Popchar from Ergonis

On Windows and Osx 

[Hans list]

Dominique Pivard wrote:
>
> I believe it is a pity no built-in solution has been
> designed for OmegaT & CafeTran users

Why don't you send an RFE to CafeTran development?

[Igor Kmitowski]

Hi Dominique,

I treat this thread as RFE so later on today CafeTran will be able to
insert the non-breaking space via a shortcut on Windows (CTRL+SHIFT+space,
by default), as well.

Thank you for asking :)

Igor

--
Igor Kmitowski
Translator and Java developer
CafeTran website: http://www.cafetran.com
CafeTran support: cafetran...@gmail.com

[Dominique Pivard]

On 23 December 2012 15:09, Igor Kmitowski <cafetran...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Igor,

> I treat this thread as RFE so later on today CafeTran will be able to insert
> the non-breaking space via a shortcut on Windows (CTRL+SHIFT+space, by
> default), as well.

Well, that would be the best solution, obviously! It's funny OmegaT is
ten years old, there are a number of French people involved in its
development and no one had thought of implementing this feature. I
wonder how people who translate into French on Windows (given the size
of the user base, there must be quite a few of them) deal with
non-breaking spaces.

> Thank you for asking :)

No problem! Btw, the long thread mentioned by J-C on the OmegaT list
was started by a Pôle, who wrote:

"Non breaking space is handy for Polish (and perhaps some other
languages) because it is the thousands separator)."

So maybe the feature can be useful to you as well ;-)

Cheers,

Dominique

[Hans list]

> development and no one had thought of implementing this feature. I
> wonder how people who translate into French on Windows (given the size
> of the user base, there must be quite a few of them) deal with
> non-breaking spaces.
>

They break them.

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On Dec 24, 2012, at 6:57 PM, Dominique Pivard <domi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's funny OmegaT is ten years old, there are a number of French people involved in its development and no one had thought of implementing this feature.

What makes you think that ?

[Hans list]

On Dec 24, 2012, at 11:33 AM, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

>
> On Dec 24, 2012, at 6:57 PM, Dominique Pivard <domi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It's funny OmegaT is ten years old, there are a number of French people involved in its development and no one had thought of implementing this feature.
>
> What makes you think that ?

Sorry, my display doesn't show it, but is there a non-breaking space inserted before the question mark in your reply?

[Dominique Pivard]

On 24 December 2012 12:33, Jean-Christophe Helary

<jean.christ...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 24, 2012, at 6:57 PM, Dominique Pivard <domi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It's funny OmegaT is ten years old, there are a number of French people involved in its development and no one had thought of implementing this feature.
>
> What makes you think that ?

OK, someone has thought of implementing the feature, but the thought
hasn't materialized? Bottom line: there's no easy way to insert
non-breaking spaces in OmegaT in Windows, unless I'm mistaken. FWIW,
SDL Trados Studio, memoQ, Wordfast Pro (and soon, apparently,
CafeTran) can do it with Ctrl+Shift+Enter, like in MS-Word.

Cheers,

Dominique

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On Dec 24, 2012, at 8:08 PM, Dominique Pivard <domi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> OK, someone has thought of implementing the feature, but the thought
> hasn't materialized?

Thoughts don't "materialize" by magic. Coders need to consider that coding a method to insert a non breaking space (and other special characters) is a priority over other features.

> FWIW, SDL Trados Studio, memoQ, Wordfast Pro (and soon, apparently, CafeTran) can do it with Ctrl+Shift+Enter, like in MS-Word.

FWIW, all the above programs are non free programs. I guess it is easier for coders to set their priorities when there is money involved. If OmegaT users really wanted such a character insertion method, they have funded its development by now. It is not the case, so I'm guessing it is not very high on their priority list either.

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On Dec 24, 2012, at 7:35 PM, Hans list <hans...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> What makes you think that ?
>
> Sorry, my display doesn't show it, but is there a non-breaking space inserted before the question mark in your reply?

I don't remember. It is possible though.

[Selcuk Akyuz]

DVX also inserts nonbreaking space with Ctrl+Shift+Space but you cannot display it. By the way I still see them as squares in CafeTran
http://www.proz.com/forum/cafetran_support/216163-display_of_invisible_characters_in_cafetran.html

Perhaps I need to make a re-installation and install CT under C, not C:\Program Files

Selcuk

[Dominique Pivard]

On 24 December 2012 13:39, Selcuk Akyuz <turkisht...@gmail.com> wrote:

> DVX also inserts nonbreaking space with Ctrl+Shift+Space but you cannot
> display it. By the way I still see them as squares in CafeTran
> http://www.proz.com/forum/cafetran_support/216163-display_of_invisible_characters_in_cafetran.html
>
> Perhaps I need to make a re-installation and install CT under C, not
> C:\Program Files

I think XP is a more plausible explanation than the location of the CT
program files. You don't have another PC with a more recent version of
Windows on which you could try?

Cheers,

Dominique

[Selcuk Akyuz]

I know I have to upgrade both my computer and OS. 64 bit Windows 7 running on a super past PC (with 16 GB RAM) would be good. A Mac? Never dreamed it but will ask Santa for it as well.

Selcuk

[Dominique Pivard]

On 24 December 2012 19:00, Selcuk Akyuz <turkisht...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know I have to upgrade both my computer and OS. 64 bit Windows 7 running
> on a super past PC (with 16 GB RAM) would be good. A Mac? Never dreamed it
> but will ask Santa for it as well.

Why not go for 32 GB on a late 2012 27" iMac ;-)

Just do like this guy:

http://youtu.be/0uYzM9cwNas?hd=1

Buy the RAM on Amazon for $160 instead of paying the $600 Apple is
asking you (probably even more than that in Europe), and install it
yourself, looks easy enough!

Cheers,

Dominique

[Selcuk Akyuz]

Well, the last time I used a Mac was in 1996.



Santa, a new PC please :)

Selcuk

[Dominique Pivard]

On 24 December 2012 19:42, Selcuk Akyuz <turkisht...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, the last time I used a Mac was in 1996.
>

> Santa, a new PC please :)

Modern Macs are quite different animals, both software and
hardware-wise. With Intel-processors, plenty of RAM and
virtualization, a Mac is a viable alternative as a PC. Even with just
4 GB of RAM, my two-year old MacBook Air makes a very good Windows
machine (virtually, inside Mountain Lion).

Cheers,

Dominique

[Hans list]

Dominique Pivard wrote:
> On 24 December 2012 19:42, Selcuk Akyuz <turkisht...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, the last time I used a Mac was in 1996.
>>
>> Santa, a new PC please :)
>
> Modern Macs are quite different animals, both software and
> hardware-wise. With Intel-processors, plenty of RAM and
> virtualization, a Mac is a viable alternative as a PC.

Totally off topic but fascinating review:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WTYet-qf1jo

And I thought it was me, getting old ...

[Selcuk Akyuz]

AFAIK, in OmegaT (Windows) Alt+0160 can be used to insert a nonbreaking space.

Selcuk

[Dominique Pivard]

On 25 December 2012 02:19, Selcuk Akyuz <turkisht...@gmail.com> wrote:

> AFAIK, in OmegaT (Windows) Alt+0160 can be used to insert a nonbreaking
> space.

Sure, but it can get tiresome if you need to do it in every sentence
that includes a question mark, an exclamation mark, a colon, a
semi-colon, a percentage sign etc., such as in French.

It's also cumbersome on a laptop with no separate numerical keyboard
(you need to use NumLock) or even impossible (one of my laptops has no
NumLock key).

The following AutoHotKey script *kind of* works:

^+Space::
Send {char 0160}
Return

It lets you use the standard Ctrl+Shift+Space shortcut to produce the
non-breaking space, but sometimes you need to press it several times
before getting the desired character. Also, OmegaT doesn't allow for
an easy identification of its window by AutoHotKey, so you can't make
the script active in OmegaT only. It's a Java-related issue, but
Wordfast Pro hasn't got this problem. I made an AutoHotKey script that
handled punctuation for French (including non-breaking spaces) back
when there was no built-in feature (see http://youtu.be/VPt2leh1KiA).

Cheers,

Dominique

[Hans List]

One more reason to stop this silly, ugly habit. Of which no person knows the reason. 

[Selcuk Akyuz]

You need to add them in your language pair and I use AHK scripts to remove non-breaking spaces and replace curly quotes with straight ones. By the way those apple glossaries are full of non-breaking spaces.

Tested the latest beta build of OmegaT, it is unbelievable that people still use it. Finally terms can be added and used on-the-fly, what else? You can't even add tags one by one. It seems to me that most of the users of CafeTran are Mac users whose expectations are really high; on the other hand Windows users prefer WF Pro and Linux users prefer OmegaT. No idea on who uses Swordfish and Heartsome. 

Selcuk

[Hans list]

Selcuk Akyuz wrote:
>
> No idea on who uses Swordfish

There are some Linux users reported.

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On Dec 25, 2012, at 5:36 PM, Selcuk Akyuz <turkisht...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Tested the latest beta build of OmegaT, it is unbelievable that people
> still use it.

They don't want to waste time trying to learn a different tool that does not seem to offer that much benefit over what they use ?
They don't want to spend money on something that does not seem to offer much more ?

> Finally terms can be added and used on-the-fly, what else?

That feature was added about 2 years ago. That was version 2.2.2.
http://bit.ly/12MiB37

> You can't even add tags one by one.

Well, if you want, you actually can, because there is a scripting interface that gives you access to that information. I wrote a small script that allows me to do that. But I suspect that is not what you are talking about.

> It seems to me that most of the users
> of CafeTran are Mac users whose expectations are really high; on the other
> hand Windows users prefer WF Pro and Linux users prefer OmegaT.

I'd be curious to know the data you're basing your opinion on. Java CATs are equally available on the three platforms. OmegaT is downloaded about 6000 times a month mostly by Windows users (Mac and Linux are at the same level) and even accounting on the fact that it is available on most Linux distributions, I suspect there are not that many translators on Linux.

[Hans list]

Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>
> They don't want to spend money on something that does not seem to offer much more ?

This is of course a decision that everyone has to make for himself and thus has to be respected. Nevertheless, personally I'm willing to pay the kind person that is willing to adapt my main tool to my needs. I don't have programming knowledge myself and usually invested time is compensated with money (time is money). In other words: paying money for a CAT tool is *for me* the counterpart of the fact that I want to earn money with my own work. The mere fact that a developer responds to technical problems within an acceptable time frame (regardless of how you define this ;)) already comes with a price tag.

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On Dec 25, 2012, at 7:33 PM, Hans list <hans...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The mere fact that a developer responds to technical problems within an acceptable time frame (regardless of how you define this ;)) already comes with a price tag.

I totally agree with you. That's why Heartsome was widely used before Rodolfo left them. But the fact is that all the tool we mention seem to have a similar development process and so the main difference does not seem to be here.

[Hans list]

Cher Domilist,

Even better: the upcoming update will offer a surround function, per keyboard shortcut or via the context menu. User-definable. That means you can add non-breaking spaces too:

Inserted like this:

1. Select 'het' by double-clicking.

2. Call context menu.

3. Select <S> (surround function).

Et voila.

[Dominique Pivard]

On 25 December 2012 11:54, Jean-Christophe Helary

<jean.christ...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 25, 2012, at 5:36 PM, Selcuk Akyuz <turkisht...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> You can't even add tags one by one.
>
> Well, if you want, you actually can, because there is a scripting interface that gives you access to that information. I wrote a small script that allows me to do that. But I suspect that is not what you are talking about.

I guess Selcuk is talking about a built-in, easy way to insert tags,
for instance via a function key, a keyboard shortcut etc., like in
almost all other tools. Having to write a script to something as basic
as inserting tags sounds like a complicated way to do things.

>> It seems to me that most of the users
>> of CafeTran are Mac users whose expectations are really high; on the other
>> hand Windows users prefer WF Pro and Linux users prefer OmegaT.
>
> I'd be curious to know the data you're basing your opinion on. Java CATs are equally available on the three platforms. OmegaT is downloaded about 6000 times a month mostly by Windows users (Mac and Linux are at the same level) and even accounting on the fact that it is available on most Linux distributions, I suspect there are not that many translators on Linux.

Selcuk's impression is probably based on two proselyting members of
this list, namely the two Hans, who both happen to be Mac users. A
more reliable source of information would indeed be the downloading
stats, which Igor certainly has. It would in fact be interesting to
compare the split between Windows, Mac and Linux for all Java-based
tools. I'm sure there are some differences in the relative share of
each platform, but the order is probably the same (W-M-L) for all.

Cheers,

Dominique

[Hans van den Broek]

On 26 Des 2012, at 18:20, Dominique Pivard wrote:

> A more reliable source of information would indeed be the downloading
> stats, which Igor certainly has.

Now that would mean he's running a business. Are you sure?

Cheers,

Hans

--

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