reassigned to bh

Agreed. This should be an option at least if not the default behaviour. 

Control Z (undo) after typing " is a tolerable work-around, but it would be better 
not to have to think about it at all. I cannot think of many situations where one 
would want smart quotes before or after digits.

> I cannot think of many situations where one 
> would want smart quotes before or after digits.

"The train arrives at 9"

The point isn't how often it happens.

At least as it is now, there is a simple (if not very obvious) workaround
(Ctrl+z). If the 'smart-quotes' were 'smart' enough to leave quotes after
numbers alone, how would you override that when you need it?

And, to be completely pedantic, the ASCI quotes are not the actual symbols:
Unicode defines distinct code points for the symbols prime (minutes, U+2032) and
double-prime (seconds, U+2033).

I'm not arguing for one behavior or the other, only that it isn't a clear-cut
case. Rather than make the app too 'smart', I prefer that it be easy to tell the
app to do exactly what I want.

I can only concur that using straight quotes for measurements is incorrect! As 
has been pointed out by jes, the correct replacement would be U+2032 and 
U+2033.

What about extending the normal quote rules by the following rules?
In normal text:
1) number' -> number[prime]
2) number" -> number[double prime]
3) number[prime]number" -> number[prime]number[double prime]
With quotes:
4) 'text number' -> autoreplace ' by single quotes
4a) followed immediately by a second number?
  -> go back and replace closing quote by prime, leave quotes open
4b) followed immediately by another single quote?
  -> go back and replace first quote by prime, close quotes
5) "text number' -> replace ' by prime, leave quotes open
6) "text number" -> replace " by double quotes
6a) immediately followed by another number?
  -> go back and replace closing quotes by double prime, leave quotes open
6b) immediately followed by "?
  -> go back and change closing quotes to double prime and second quotes to 
real closing quotes

Of course, this should be activated separately by a third AutoCorrect option 
group "Prime replacement". (Not all fonts have primes and double primes.)


As for the feasability of such a replacement, that's up to the developers ;-)
But it would be a nice typographic improvement.

At least with the example 5'7" there is a clear pattern: (\d+)'(\d+)"
Also, if there are no open quotes in the paragraph, there are no call for
closing quotes after a number.
It would probably need a section like Smart Quotes (or the tab renamed and
extended) to insert the Primes, since it's not a straight text-replace, but is
easily matched nonetheless.

To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on
my owner to the owner "requirements". 

Tools - AutoCorrect Options... - Localized Options - Double quotes
AOO410m14(Build:9760)  -  Rev. 1585624
2014-04-08_04:11:10 - Rev. 1585644
Debian