Entourage 2004 fixed-width font display

D

Derek K. Miller

Entourage 2004 is inserting text ligatures and curly quotes where I don't
want them, and I want to know how to get it to stop.

I prefer viewing all my mail in plain text, in a fixed-width font, whenever
possible. In all versions of Outlook Express and Entourage so far, that has
worked fine, and I've been using ProFont as my typeface, although the
system-standard Monaco will also do.

However, I'm now trying out the Office 2004 Test Drive, and Entourage is
doing funny things with plain text. It is generating ligatures (turning "fi"
into one character, for instance) and curly quotes for apostrophes and
quotation marks as I type, and in displaying messages. (It's doing it right
now, for instance.) I've posted a weblog entry showing what I mean:

http://www.penmachine.com/#108736025718402077

http://www.penmachine.com/journal/2004_06_01_news_archive.html#1087360257184
02077

There are many reasons I don't like that:

1. Ligatures change the number of characters on a line. In a fixed-width
font, a 72 character line can have 73 or more characters, since ligatures
are a single character. Sometimes I want the number of characters in a line
to be truly fixed.

2. I don't like the look of curly quotes in ProFont or Monaco.

3. I can't tell at a glance whether my messages are 7-bit ASCII compliant
anymore, or whether the curly quotes and ligatures might get turned into
quoted-printable ("=20") characters and so forth when I send them. As far as
I can tell, Entourage is just doing this on the fly for display, and not
converting the characters in the e-mail, but I can't know that for sure just
by looking.

So, is there a way to turn this behaviour off? Entourage v.X doesn't do any
of it (and I like that), and Apple Mail only does the curly quotes, not the
ligatures, so it's obviously not something dependent on the Mac OS. If it's
a fixed behaviour, I won't be upgrading -- it annoys me that much.

I'm running Panther 10.3.4 on an eMac 1.25 GHz with 1 GB of RAM, if that has
any impact.

--
Derek K. Miller - (e-mail address removed)
Writer, Editor, Web Guy, Drummer, Dad - Vancouver, Canada
Penmachine Media Company | http://www.penmachine.com
The Neurotics - fab rock | http://www.TheNeurotics.com
Sent using the Microsoft Entourage 2004 for Mac Test Drive.
 
D

Dave Cortright

Entourage 2004 is inserting text ligatures and curly quotes where I don't
want them, and I want to know how to get it to stop.

Strange. I've never seen Entourage 2004 do ligature replacement when I'm
composing in a plain text mail message. You are composing in plain text,
right? FWIW I even tried to repro in an HTML message using ProFontLatin1 and
couldn't. The only way I think this could be happening is if the font you
are using supports ligatures and if you are composing in HTML.
2. I don't like the look of curly quotes in ProFont or Monaco.

Turn them off in Tools:Autocorrect
 
D

Derek K. Miller

Strange. I've never seen Entourage 2004 do ligature replacement when I'm
composing in a plain text mail message. You are composing in plain text,
right? FWIW I even tried to repro in an HTML message using ProFontLatin1 and
couldn't. The only way I think this could be happening is if the font you
are using supports ligatures and if you are composing in HTML.

I'm writing in plain text, so I wasn't sure what was going on. However,
using Apple's MPW font, which is very similar to ProFont, solves the
problem, as suggested by someone on my website:

<http://www.haloscan.com/comments.php?user=penmachine&comment=10873602571840
2077>

Dan said:
Entourage 2004 turns on ligatures by default, and the behavior depends on the
font. There are a few different versions of Profont floating around. You might
try ProFontISOLatin1. The MPW font also works well. I'm not sure if this link
still works, but it was once at:

<ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Tool_Chest/Core_Mac_OS_Tools/MPW_etc./Miscell
aneous/MPW_Font.sit.hqx>

(The link still works - D.)

Dave said:
Turn them off in Tools:Autocorrect

Thank you! That worked great. I'm still not sure why the ligatures were
showing up to start with, but now that I have a proper fixed-width font
back, I'm not as concerned.

--
Derek K. Miller - (e-mail address removed)
Writer, Editor, Web Guy, Drummer, Dad - Vancouver, Canada
Penmachine Media Company | http://www.penmachine.com
The Neurotics - fab rock | http://www.TheNeurotics.com
Sent using the Microsoft Entourage 2004 for Mac Test Drive.
 

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