French: Put space between the end of a sentence and punctuation
Appending an exclamation mark or a question mark (only those two) right after a word is grammatically incorrect in French.
e.g.: "I love SwiftKey X!" should be "I love SwiftKey X !"
Nearly all the keyboards on Android except the stock one does this mistake (even the physical
keyboard on my previous Motorola phone when auto-punctuation was enabled). It would be great if SwiftKey X did that !
Thanks,
Gabriel F.
Gabriel Féron
shared this idea
89 comments
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onch
commented
je suis pour!
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Fred
commented
Same question here... It's been adding the spaces before : and ; for a while! But still no way to solve the ambiguous situations when one has English and French installed... Or just to turn off this feature (again, this rule doesn't apply in Switzerland, contrary to what has been written here)
More and more disappointed with the way SwiftKey people handle requests :-( -
Eric
commented
This idea is completed, does it mean it's been implemented, or that it did not get enough votes to be planned in a future release?
Please clarify!
Thanks. -
Brian commented
Yes, this is so bothersome. Question marks and Exclamations, it adds a space. Especially when I want to write a quote or a tweet, when I'm use to writing in English format.
Perhaps this feature should be a choice on the main Swift X settings. This punctuation style happens in French and possibly a few other languages. When I would like it in English format and vice versa for other people.
Note: When I write a quote (French keyboard). There is no space when I enter ".-"
Ex: Had no need of a guide to learn ignorance.-Voltaire
There needs a space for ". -" -
Fred
commented
I got this answer in my mailbox, doesn't seem to have been published here and can't answer to the mail, so I'll take the liberty of putting the conversation here:
Trak commented on No space between the end of a sentence and punctation in French
If we go through the route of suppressing whitespaces, we should do it fully : in the middle ages there were no spaces between words they were all glued together. So let's suppress ALL these useless spaces !
More seriously, there is a rule, we stick with it. We could set up an option for French variants which don't use those spaces, but for those which do use them they have to be here. As for orphaned character, that's what non-breakable spaces are for.
Technology should be adapted to humans, not humans to it.
So I answered:
I get your point.
But then, please indeed find a way for french speaking minorities like Swiss people, who don't have this rule, to be able to disable it.
Or, if you want to maintain the French French hegemony, please at least make your software work when English language is also installed.
I am fed up with getting this mix of space and no space, this looks really ugly for a paying software.
Thanks in advance.
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Fred
commented
I do agree with andreid.
Although these rules are followed in books, most of my french friends never use these extra spaces in mails or text messages.
On top of that, and again, the implementation is totally buggy when having french and english installed. Because some words are the same in english or friends, eg nicknames, or we use english words in french. So you'll get, in a message in french:
Hello! Ca va ? Moi ça va ! Embrasse bien Tipiou!
Which is very bad. A deal breaker, actually. Looking into other keyboards already, which is really too bad because otherwise swiftkey is great.
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Didier
commented
I totally agree with Eric. The current implementation might not be the best but it is already better than the old one. NBSP's would be ideal of course if possible.
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Eric
commented
I am sorry I don't agree.
Don't change the rules to match the tools, but tools should follow languages rules and their changes.Insecable spaces are made for this purpose to avoid orpheans characters.
English people need to understand that their language is not the best, and that some differences need to be respected in other languages.
That's it.As long as luangage did not change, I don't see the point in not updating the tools to respect that. I don't want to see those spaces removed, on paper and on screen!
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andreid
commented
SPACES MULTIPLY ORPHAN CHARACTERS ON COMPUTER SCREENS. AVOID IMPLEMENTATION AT ALL COST. THIS SILLY TYPOGRAPHIC RULE BELONGS TO THE GÜTENBURG ERA! I REMIND ALL CONCERNED PARTIES THAT WE ARE IN 2012. A SCREEN IS NOT PRINTED PAPER.
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andreid
commented
Spaces in front of some capricious typo rules should be banned on computer screens.
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Myst
commented
Hello, I'm also from Switzerland and I would really like to remove spaces before punctuation... Could this be an option ? It would be really great, and I would buy this keyboard without any doubt :) Thanks a lot !
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m
commented
Thank you for your answer Éric, so there is a bug for me, I don't have autospace before "!" and "?" (Motorola Defy plus - Android 2.3.4)
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Fred
commented
PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE Swiftkey find a quick way to make this buggy feature optional!
Or create a Swiss French language that doesn't have it!
Having english and french installed is a real nightmare!
Meanwhile, is there a way to revert to version 2? It would solve the bugs temporarily...
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Eric
commented
Hi m.
The problem is fixed for those characters "," "." "!" and "?"
However, for ":" and ";" this is still a problem. -
m
commented
@Eric
The problem is fixed for you ? (because it's not for me...) -
Fred
commented
I'm swiss, and I had never heard of this rule indeed! So for me it is a bit annoying to have these extra spaces!
On top of that, with french and english installed, there are some bugs in the current implementation, it does not always apply the rule, depending on the context.
I would suggest to add an option ïn the settings giving the choice to have the space or not! So purists would be happy, and swiss people as well ;)
Thanks in advance to consider my request! -
Didier
commented
Concerning “;” and “:”, in fact those symbols do no trigger the selection of the main proposal, they are simply added directly after the other characters (probably a bug?). However, if you select a proposal (which adds a space), those characters do not remove the space (as opposite to the dot or comma for example)
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Eric
commented
@Eadred: No worries mate!
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eadred
commented
You are right guys regarding the punctuation. Rules are no different in Switzerland, I have backchecked. I was just lacking knowledge regarding punctuation. Thanks for the free lesson.
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Eric
commented
The last update of version 3 did bring the fix for the symbols '?' and '!' where now, the space is added before and after. However, it is still not added for those ones: ';' and ':'
