Text replacement of particular characters

[FL K]

Hi there dear F53,

I noticed somewhat of an oddity in text/title cues in QLab 5; there are particular symbols (such as single and double quotes), that seem to be replaced automatically (on entry) with other single/double quote symbols; The problem is, the ones that it gets replaced with don't (often) seem to be part of quite a few fonts, which leads to font substitution for those particular symbols, which in turn (because we are not aligning to the fonts baseline) leads to the whole text line jumping slightly up/down on screen in response.

Is this auto-substitution some annoying macOS thing that can't be helped, or is this something that could be switched off? The weird thing is, you first see the desired symbol in the desired font (so it understands and sees it exists), and only after entering/moving on does it get replaced with the substitute font.

I have started looking into Birdfont to duplicate/substitute the desired symbols onto the non-represented Unicode address, but it is a tedious and annoying process, if I have to do this with all the fonts where I seem to encounter the issue...

Thanks for looking into it :)!

All the best,

Freddy

[Sam Kusnetz]

On Oct 30, 2025 at 8:36:55 AM, FL K <busy...@gmail.com> wrote:

I noticed somewhat of an oddity in text/title cues in QLab 5; there are particular symbols (such as single and double quotes), that seem to be replaced automatically (on entry) with other single/double quote symbols

This is a system-wide macOS feature, not a QLab feature.

Is this auto-substitution some annoying macOS thing that can't be helped, or is this something that could be switched off?

On Sequoia and later:

1. Go to System Settings > Keyboard.
   
2. Under “Text Input,” next to the language you’re using, click the Edit button.
3. Turn off “Use smart quotes and dashes.”

Best

Sam

—

Sam Kusnetz (he/him) | Figure 53

s...@figure53.com

[FL K]

Amazing, thank you, Sam!