Check for unspaced footnote caller/reference

Question

Footnote callers should have a space after them (or before if the caller comes ahead of what it refers to, ESV-style). Is there a PT automatic check that will flag the case where the translator forgets to type that space?

Answer 1

I don’t believe there is an automatic check built into Paratext. This is
the kind of thing i use Regular Expressions to look for. A simple check for
no space might look like:

regex:\\[fx]\*[^\s]

This should find as a regular expression any \f* or \x* followed by
something that is not a space.

anon848905
Americas Area Language Technology Coordinator
[Email Removed]
[Phone Removed]Office at JAARS)
[Phone Removed]Cell)
Skype name: anon848905

Comments

Did you mean:

regex:[fx]\*[^\s]

?

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No, I meant: (and in my sent items it show)

two backslashes before the [fx] and a backslash before the *

For some reason it got clobbered before it came out. This appears to be a problem with the way the Supporters site handles html. You actually have to double escape characters to get the to work correctly in the output. So what would need to be written in an email is:
regex:\\\\[fx]\\*[^\s]

anon848905
Americas Area Language Technology Coordinator
[Email Removed]
[Phone Removed]Office at JAARS)
[Phone Removed]Cell)
Skype name: anon848905

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This worked best for me:

regex:\\[fx]\*[^»“\)\]\}\-\s]

(where » and “ are the two types of close quotes we use in our language.)

The above finds callers that are definitely in the wrong place. Then I recheck the ones before close quotes, which may or may not be correct.

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@anon848905, if you put four spaces at the start of a line and a blank line before, it will be indented and formatted monospaced … plus, all backslashes are treated as literal backslashes, removing the need to double escape them.

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Oh, and this works nicely, particularly in RegEx Pal, to highlight the whole footnote, but not the punctuation or other character that follows:

\\f .*\\[fx]\*(?![\)\]\}»“\-\s])

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You might want to use this:

\\(f|x) .*?\\\1\*(?![\)\]\}»“\-\s])

\\(f|x) Look for footnotes or cross references
.*? “Non-greedy” (i.e. “match as little as possible”) for cases where there’s more than one footnote/cross ref per verse
\\ A backslash
\1 Either an f or an x
\*(?![\)\]\}»“\-\s]) Same as your expression

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Thanks. You added the professional touch!

Answer 2

If you found this topic interesting, then also see this thread.