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What's Global Moxie?

Global Moxie is the hypertext laboratory of Josh Clark, a designer, developer, and author who offers workshops and consulting for iPhone app design. He’s also creator of Big Medium, a web content management system. Josh spins words and code from multimedia studios in Providence, RI, and Paris, France.

What's Big Medium?

Big Medium is flexible, easy-to-use server software for creating and editing websites directly from your browser. Check out the features or download now.

On Shelves

Books by Josh Clark

Tap Happy: Designing Great iPhone Apps

Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders

iWork ’09: The Mising Manual

Moxiemail

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Home > Help! > Big Medium FAQ > Page Display

How do I make Big Medium generate “curly quotes” and other typographic finery?

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Question

How do I make Big Medium generate “curly quotes” and other typographic finery?

Answer

Use the SmartyPants plugin for Big Medium.

About SmartyPants

SmartyPants is a Perl plugin written by the oh-so-clever John Gruber. Originally designed for use with Movable Type, Blosxom, and BBEdit, I've tweaked it to work with Big Medium, too.

When installed, the SmartyPants plugin for Big Medium adds the following transformations to your page content:

  • Straight quotes ( " and ' ) into “curly” quote HTML entities
  • Dashes (“--” and “---”) into en- and em-dash entities
  • Three consecutive dots (“...”) into an ellipsis entity

(Sorry, for now at least, the plugin does not transform the text of page/link titles, only to the body text of pages.)

To Install

Download the SmartyPants plugin for Big Medium.

SmartyPants for Big Medium 1.0 (8 KB)
Download the SmartyPants plugin (requires Big Medium 2.0b27 or later).

Unzip the download file to get SmartyPants.pl file. Upload this file to the plugins directory inside your site's moxiebin directory, making sure that your FTP client is set to "plain text" (or "ASCII") mode.

Rebuild all pages to make Big Medium update the text of all of your current pages, and you're done.

More from this section

Home > Help! > Big Medium FAQ > Page Display
Why don't accented characters display correctly?
How to resolve encoding conflicts between your server and Big Medium.
Why are some widgets not showing up on my pages?
What to do if your announcements, tips or some link widgets are not making it into your pages.
How do I make Big Medium generate “curly quotes” and other typographic finery?
Use the SmartyPants plugin for Big Medium.
How do I password-protect sites managed by Big Medium?
Keeping your site (or portions of it) private.
Why are the images in my custom templates broken on some pages?
Troubleshoot broken images in your templates.
Why do Flash animations obscure parts of my page?
Tips for fixing flash movies that "float" above other page elements, including dropdown menus and enlarged/slideshow images.
Can I split articles into multiple pages?
Yes, download the custom plugin that enables this feature in Big Medium.
Can I add additional data fields to my Big Medium pages?
This tutorial walks you through the creation of a custom plugin to add additional data fields to Big Medium.
How do I block the display of “one-click editing” links?
Why are edit links displayed on all public pages, even after I click “hide edit links” on the edit strip?

Blog

Tapworthy App Design at SXSW
“Curating” SXSW’s iPhone Apps Workshop
Ready for My Close-Up: September Speaking Events
Best iPhone Apps: Picks, advice, and resources
Vote Early and Often: My SXSW Talks
Buzz for Best iPhone Apps

Project News

Tap Happy: Designing Great iPhone Apps on Bookshelves May 2010
Perl Critic for BBEdit 1.1
Now on Shelves: Best iPhone Apps
iWork ’09: The Missing Manual Now on Bookshelves
iWork ’09: The Missing Manual Available for Preorder
Big Medium Book: Now in Paperback
Download Big Medium
Try it free for 30 days, or buy to unlock.

Simple, Elegant, Effective

"Hats off to Josh. I always wanted someone to do a program like this. Simple, elegant and effective."
—Kevin Osborn

"There are people here in my office so impressed with your dedication and support of your product that they are convinced that you are not just one person but a small army."
—Paul McBroome

"Just a short note to say thank you for the many hours of hard work and dedication you have put into your product, Big Medium. We are extremely pleased with our purchase. It's not just that we needed a CMS and are relieved to be using one, it's that we found one that is easy to work with and which met all the requirements that we needed to take our websites to the next level. It's exhilarating just thinking of the possibilities we now have at our fingertips!"
—MaggiLu Tucker

More praise for Big Medium