new plugin: smartypants.py, smart quotes for pyblosxom
Chad Miller <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.web.pyblosxom.user |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
URL: http://wiki.chad.org/SmartyPantsPy
It's my first plugin, so I'd love to get feedback. Once I'm relatively
sure that I'm doing the right things, I'll register it on the web-site.
Please reply to me directly as I am not subscribed to the -users list.
- chad
----
smartypants.py
SmartyPants ported to Python
Ported by [1]Chad Miller Copyright (c) 2004 Chad Miller
original [2]SmartyPants by [3]John Gruber Copyright (c) 2003 John
Gruber
Synopsis
A smart-quotes plugin for [4]Pyblosxom.
The original "SmartyPants" is a free web publishing plug-in for
Movable Type, Blosxom, and BBEdit that easily translates plain ASCII
punctuation characters into "smart" typographic punctuation HTML
entities.
This software, smartypants.py, endeavours to be a functional port of
SmartyPants to Python, for use with [5]Pyblosxom.
Description
SmartyPants can perform the following transformations:
* Straight quotes ( " and ' ) into "curly" quote HTML entities
* Backticks-style quotes (``like this'') into "curly" quote HTML
entities
* Dashes (-- and ---) into en- and em-dash entities
* Three consecutive dots (... or . . .) into an ellipsis entity
This means you can write, edit, and save your posts using plain old
ASCII straight quotes, plain dashes, and plain dots, but your
published posts (and final HTML output) will appear with smart quotes,
em-dashes, and proper ellipses.
SmartyPants does not modify characters within <pre>, <code>, <kbd>,
<math> or <script> tag blocks. Typically, these tags are used to
display text where smart quotes and other "smart punctuation" would
not be appropriate, such as source code or example markup.
Backslash Escapes
If you need to use literal straight quotes (or plain hyphens and
periods), SmartyPants accepts the following backslash escape sequences
to force non-smart punctuation. It does so by transforming the escape
sequence into a decimal-encoded HTML entity:
(FIXME: table here.)
This is useful, for example, when you want to use straight quotes as
foot and inch marks: 6'2" tall; a 17" iMac.
Options
For Pyblosxom users, the smartypants_attributes attribute is where you
specify configuration options.
Numeric values are the easiest way to configure SmartyPants' behavior:
"0"
Suppress all transformations. (Do nothing.)
"1"
Performs default SmartyPants transformations: quotes (including
``backticks'' -style), em-dashes, and ellipses. "--" (dash
dash) is used to signify an em-dash; there is no support for
en-dashes.
"2"
Same as smarty_pants="1", except that it uses the old-school
typewriter shorthand for dashes: "--" (dash dash) for
en-dashes, "---" (dash dash dash) for em-dashes.
"3"
Same as smarty_pants="2", but inverts the shorthand for dashes:
"--" (dash dash) for em-dashes, and "---" (dash dash dash) for
en-dashes.
"-1"
Stupefy mode. Reverses the SmartyPants transformation process,
turning the HTML entities produced by SmartyPants into their
ASCII equivalents. E.g. "“" is turned into a simple
double-quote ("), "—" is turned into two dashes, etc.
The following single-character attribute values can be combined to
toggle individual transformations from within the smarty_pants
attribute. For example, to educate normal quotes and em-dashes, but
not ellipses or ``backticks'' -style quotes:
py['smartypants_attributes'] = "1"
"q"
Educates normal quote characters: (") and (').
"b"
Educates ``backticks'' -style double quotes.
"B"
Educates ``backticks'' -style double quotes and `single'
quotes.
"d"
Educates em-dashes.
"D"
Educates em-dashes and en-dashes, using old-school typewriter
shorthand: (dash dash) for en-dashes, (dash dash dash) for
em-dashes.
"i"
Educates em-dashes and en-dashes, using inverted old-school
typewriter shorthand: (dash dash) for em-dashes, (dash dash
dash) for en-dashes.
"e"
Educates ellipses.
"w"
Translates any instance of " into a normal double-quote
character. This should be of no interest to most people, but of
particular interest to anyone who writes their posts using
Dreamweaver, as Dreamweaver inexplicably uses this entity to
represent a literal double-quote character. SmartyPants only
educates normal quotes, not entities (because ordinarily,
entities are used for the explicit purpose of representing the
specific character they represent). The "w" option must be used
in conjunction with one (or both) of the other quote options
("q" or "b"). Thus, if you wish to apply all SmartyPants
transformations (quotes, en- and em-dashes, and ellipses) and
also translate " entities into regular quotes so
SmartyPants can educate them, you should pass the following to
the smarty_pants attribute:
Caveats
Why You Might Not Want to Use Smart Quotes in Your Weblog
For one thing, you might not care.
Most normal, mentally stable individuals do not take notice of proper
typographic punctuation. Many design and typography nerds, however,
break out in a nasty rash when they encounter, say, a restaurant sign
that uses a straight apostrophe to spell "Joe's".
If you're the sort of person who just doesn't care, you might well
want to continue not caring. Using straight quotes -- and sticking to
the 7-bit ASCII character set in general -- is certainly a simpler way
to live.
Even if you I do care about accurate typography, you still might want
to think twice before educating the quote characters in your weblog.
One side effect of publishing curly quote HTML entities is that it
makes your weblog a bit harder for others to quote from using
copy-and-paste. What happens is that when someone copies text from
your blog, the copied text contains the 8-bit curly quote characters
(as well as the 8-bit characters for em-dashes and ellipses, if you
use these options). These characters are not standard across different
text encoding methods, which is why they need to be encoded as HTML
entities.
People copying text from your weblog, however, may not notice that
you're using curly quotes, and they'll go ahead and paste the
unencoded 8-bit characters copied from their browser into an email
message or their own weblog. When pasted as raw "smart quotes", these
characters are likely to get mangled beyond recognition.
That said, my own opinion is that any decent text editor or email
client makes it easy to stupefy smart quote characters into their
7-bit equivalents, and I don't consider it my problem if you're using
an indecent text editor or email client.
Algorithmic Shortcomings
One situation in which quotes will get curled the wrong way is when
apostrophes are used at the start of leading contractions. For
example:
'Twas the night before Christmas.
In the case above, SmartyPants will turn the apostrophe into an
opening single-quote, when in fact it should be a closing one. I don't
think this problem can be solved in the general case -- every word
processor I've tried gets this wrong as well. In such cases, it's best
to use the proper HTML entity for closing single-quotes (’) by
hand.
Bugs
To file bug reports or feature requests (other than topics listed in
the Caveats section above) please send email to:
[6]mailto:[email protected]
If the bug involves quotes being curled the wrong way, please send
example text to illustrate.
To Do list
* Provide a function for use within templates to quote anything at
all.
Version History
1.5_1.0: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 08:08:35 -0500
+ Initial release
Version Information
Version numbers will track the [7]SmartyPants version numbers, with
the addition of an underscore and the smartypants.py version on the
end.
Authors
[8]John Gruber did all of the hard work of writing this software in
Perl for [9]Movable Type and almost all of this useful documentation.
[10]Chad Miller ported it to Python to use with [11]Pyblosxom.
Additional SmartyPants Credits
Portions of the SmartyPants plug-in are based on Brad Choate's nifty
MTRegex plug-in. [12]Brad Choate also contributed a few bits of source
code to SmartyPants. Brad Choate is a fine hacker indeed.
[13]Jeremy Hedley and [14]Charles Wiltgen deserve mention for
exemplary beta testing of the original SmartyPants.
[15]Rael Dornfest ported SmartyPants to Blosxom.
Copyright and License
[16]SmartyPants license:
Copyright (c) 2003 John Gruber
(http://daringfireball.net/)
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
distribution.
* Neither the name "SmartyPants" nor the names of its contributors
may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this
software without specific prior written permission.
This software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors "as
is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited
to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a
particular purpose are disclaimed. In no event shall the copyright
owner or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental,
special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not
limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use,
data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any
theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort
(including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use
of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.
smartypants.py license:
smartypants.py is a derivative work of SmartyPants.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
distribution.
This software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors "as
is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited
to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a
particular purpose are disclaimed. In no event shall the copyright
owner or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental,
special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not
limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use,
data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any
theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort
(including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use
of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.
References
1. http://web.chad.org/
2. http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/
3. http://daringfireball.net/
4. http://roughingit.subtlehints.net/pyblosxom
5. http://roughingit.subtlehints.net/pyblosxom
6. mailto:[email protected]
7. http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/
8. http://daringfireball.net/
9. http://www.movabletype.org/
10. http://web.chad.org/
11. http://roughingit.subtlehints.net/pyblosxom
12. http://bradchoate.com/
13. http://antipixel.com/
14. http://playbacktime.com/
15. http://raelity.org/
16. http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/
--
Chad Miller GPG: 9E6947D9 Jabber: [email protected] (not email)
et c. @ http://wiki.chad.org/ChadMiller
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