{"action":"created","issue":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/simoncozens/sile/issues/540","repository_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/simoncozens/sile","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/simoncozens/sile/issues/540/labels{/name}","comments_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/simoncozens/sile/issues/540/comments","events_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/simoncozens/sile/issues/540/events","html_url":"https://github.com/simoncozens/sile/issues/540","id":361110233,"node_id":"MDU6SXNzdWUzNjExMTAyMzM=","number":540,"title":"Is there a way (like a package) to add en dashes, em dashes and quotation marks through ASCII characters?","user":{"login":"hmslima","id":24208407,"node_id":"MDQ6VXNlcjI0MjA4NDA3","avatar_url":"https://avatars2.githubusercontent.com/u/24208407?v=4","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima","html_url":"https://github.com/hmslima","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/hmslima/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"labels":[],"state":"open","locked":false,"assignee":null,"assignees":[],"milestone":null,"comments":0,"created_at":"2018-09-18T02:19:00Z","updated_at":"2018-09-30T02:02:26Z","closed_at":null,"author_association":"NONE","body":"I am looking for an alternative to Latex, and SILE seems to be a good candidate, but seems that in order to add en dashes, em dashes and quotation marks I have to type these characters directly in the source text, what is very laborious in my opinion.\r\n\r\nSILE seemed to be so perfect to me. :-/\r\n\r\nIs there any SILE package that converts --, --- and \"\" respectively to –, — and “”?"},"comment":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/simoncozens/sile/issues/comments/425687854","html_url":"https://github.com/simoncozens/sile/issues/540#issuecomment-425687854","issue_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/simoncozens/sile/issues/540","id":425687854,"node_id":"MDEyOklzc3VlQ29tbWVudDQyNTY4Nzg1NA==","user":{"login":"alerque","id":173595,"node_id":"MDQ6VXNlcjE3MzU5NQ==","avatar_url":"https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/173595?v=4","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque","html_url":"https://github.com/alerque","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/alerque/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"created_at":"2018-09-30T02:02:26Z","updated_at":"2018-09-30T02:02:26Z","author_association":"COLLABORATOR","body":"No, and this is by design. At least in the core release, SILE is designed to handle Unicode out of the box. Input is expected to be Unicode and no cutesy tricks are played mashing your content around into something other than what you input. One of the major pain points of LaTeX is that it was designed and implemented in a pre-Unicode world where ANSI was good enough for anybody. Even though there are Unicode capable LaTeX engines now, even they are so layered with patches and kludges to make it all work that introducing people to writing in TeX is daunting at best and completely untenable at worse.\r\n\r\nYou are of course free to do whatever you want. An input filter that substitutes these strings would be a trivial matter of a couple lines of Lua and you could use it as your own package. Curly quotes are a little more complicated as they require context to correctly guess, but it's still workable.\r\n\r\nOn the other hand I would suggest an alternate approach: fix your input. If entering en- and em- dashes is laborious, fix that. On my computers it's not. The solutions for this vary between platforms, but on Linux this is as easy as tapping the <kbd>Compose</kbd> key and then typing two regular dashes for an en-dash or three for a em-dash. The beauty of this is that it works anywhere in any program, it's part of the input method.\r\n\r\nOther platforms have (or can be fixed to have) similar techniques that makes entry quite easy.\r\n\r\nAlternatively you can post-process your input. This is something I sometimes do for smart quotes. My source documents are often Markdown and converted to SILE for typesetting. As part of that process I run a couple search and replaces to cleanup any quotes that have been left \"computer style\" (straight). Typing those is easy too, but the one extra press it takes me is sometimes overlooked in the writing and editing stages."}}
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