Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2019 June 13

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June 13[edit]

2019 Qwerty Phones[edit]

I noticed three new Qwerty phones being released this year: Fxtec Pro1, Gemini PDA, and Cosmo Communicator. I work with blind and nearly blind patients. Many are using very old Droids because they really need the tactile response of a physical keyboard. (Yes - they can use voice control, but that is not acceptable in public.) Because there are three being released, I assume that this a trend. Are there other Qwerty phones coming out this year? 68.115.219.130 (talk) 12:38, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you're referring to the Gemini (PDA), according to our article it was crowd funded in 2017 with devices shipping in 2018 so I wouldn't exactly call it a new Qwerty phone. However the Cosmo appears to be the new model from the same people who made the Gemini which suggests it didn't do so badly that they gave up on their first attempt, but OTOH they still crowdfunded it [1]. The Fxtec Pro1 appears to also be a genuine new Qwerty phone [2]. I wouldn't call 2 devices good evidence of a trend. Nil Einne (talk) 14:49, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I notice my old QWERTY slide-out non-smart phone, the Samsung 425G, has now been transformed into a smart phone, the Samsung S425G: [3]. Looks to be identical hardware, just with new software. (Unfortunately, it seems they also quadrupled the price, from US$50 to US$200.) I'm not sure when this was done, but it's a good approach, as I always liked the hardware on that phone (except for the single, weak 2MP camera), but the software needed some tweaks, like adding threads to the SMS texts (it just piled them all together). I wonder if they fixed the other complaint I had about the software, not being able to use the numeric keypad when the QWERTY keyboard was out. But overall, I hope others do the same, to resurrect old models of QWERTY phones, which could cut down on development time and keep costs low. Touch typing just isn't possible with a touch screen, you need to look at the keyboard constantly. SinisterLefty (talk) 02:52, 16 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Word AutoCorrect Option on Smart Quotes[edit]

Is there a way that I can unset the Word option to insert smart quotes at the Word document level? I would like to be able to have some documents that have smart quotes enabled and some documents that have smart quotes disabled. It appears that I am setting the options globally, rather than having the options stick with a particular document. If a document is intended to be personal correspondence, for instance, I want smart quotes to stick with that document. If a document is intended for use in Wikipedia, where multiple single quotes turn on fonts, I want smart quotes to be disabled. Can I set the options to stick with each document, rather than globally being one way or another?

I would guess that this concern about options has been addressed by multi-lingual authors also, who might want different options when editing in different languages.

Robert McClenon (talk) 22:45, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure if I understand the smart quotes, do you mean the accent symbols that appear different depending what symbol is typed after (e.g. the ′ symbol)? For me that is in the keyboard settings used, which either have the dead keys enabled or not and not, afaik, in the Word settings? You could enable both the US international keyboard (which doesn't have dead keys) and the US keyboard (which has the dead keys). Then you could switch with alt+shift. Rmvandijk (talk) 14:02, 14 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Rmvandijk - No. I don't mean accent symbols. I mean the feature that converts straight quotes to curly quotes. I don't know how to demonstrate it in Wikipedia because the curly quotes are not in the usual set of Wiki markup symbols, although I am sure that I could do them. I mean the feature that automatically converts straight quotes to curly quotes. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:19, 15 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am not aware of document-level settings such as this. I think you need to make the setting you want after you open each document for editing. Jmar67 (talk) 14:40, 14 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Jmar67 - Thank you. Fooey. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:19, 15 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]