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Text processing

The Whistling Lobsters commenting system does some processing of text when posting. Here's an (incomplete) list (feel free to add to it):

@mentions

If you put an @ symbol in front of another user's name, it'll be rendered as a link to their profile page.

Smart quotes

Both single and double quotes are "smartened" automatically (i.e. straight quotes ' " are automatically converted into curly or "typographer's" quotes ‘ ’ ” ”).

Problems

The algorithm that does this is, ironically, not very smart. For one thing, it requires that no whitespace characters follow immediately after the opening quote, and likewise that no whitespace characters immediately precede the closing quote. If there is such whitespace, the quotes will still be converted, but they will all be opening quotes, instead of being properly rendered as opening/closing quote pairs. (Also, I'm not sure whether quote nesting is handled properly.)