process

Do the bulk of the conversion work.

SmartQuotes

Quotes to entities.

SmartDashes

Call the individual dash conversion to entities functions.

SmartEllipses

Call the individual ellipse conversion to entities functions.

EducateQuotes

   Parameter:  String.
   Returns:    The string, with "educated" curly quote HTML entities.
   Example input:  "Isn't this fun?"
   Example output: “Isn’t this fun?”

EducateBackticks

Replace double (back)ticks w/ HTML entities.

EducateSingleBackticks

Replace single (back)ticks w/ HTML entities.

EducateDashes

Dashes to HTML entity

   Parameter:  String.
   Returns:    The string, with each instance of "--" translated to
               an em-dash HTML entity.

EducateDashesOldSchool

Dashes to entities.

   Parameter:  String.
   Returns:    The string, with each instance of "--" translated to
               an en-dash HTML entity, and each "---" translated to
               an em-dash HTML entity.

EducateDashesOldSchoolInverted

   Parameter:  String.
   Returns:    The string, with each instance of "--" translated to
               an em-dash HTML entity, and each "---" translated to
               an en-dash HTML entity. Two reasons why: First, unlike the
               en- and em-dash syntax supported by
               EducateDashesOldSchool(), it's compatible with existing
               entries written before SmartyPants 1.1, back when "--" was
               only used for em-dashes.  Second, em-dashes are more
               common than en-dashes, and so it sort of makes sense that
               the shortcut should be shorter to type. (Thanks to Aaron
               Swartz for the idea.)

EducateEllipses

   Parameter:  String.
   Returns:    The string, with each instance of "..." translated to
               an ellipsis HTML entity.
   Example input:  Huh...?
   Example output: Huh…?

StupefyEntities

   Parameter:  String.
   Returns:    The string, with each SmartyPants HTML entity translated to
               its ASCII counterpart.
   Example input:  “Hello — world.”
   Example output: "Hello -- world."

SmartyPantsVersion

Return the version of SmartyPants.

ProcessEscapes

   Parameter:  String.
   Returns:    The string, with after processing the following backslash
               escape sequences. This is useful if you want to force a "dumb"
               quote or other character to appear.
               Escape  Value
               ------  -----
               \\      \
               \"      "
               \'      '
               \.      .
               \-      -
               \`      `

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:

              Escape  Value  Character
              ------  -----  ---------
                \\    \    \
                \"    "    "
                \'    '    '
                \.    .    .
                \-    -    -
                \`    `    `

This is useful, for example, when you want to use straight quotes as foot and inch marks: 6'2" tall; a 17" iMac.

MT-Textile Integration

Movable Type users should also note that SmartyPants can work in conjunction with Brad Choate's MT-Textile plug-in:

    http://bradchoate.com/past/mttextile.php

MT-Textile is a port of Dean Allen's original Textile project to Perl and Movable Type. MT-Textile by itself only translates Textile markup to HTML. However, if SmartyPants is also installed, MT-Textile will call on SmartyPants to educate quotes, dashes, and ellipses, automatically. Using SmartyPants in conjunction with MT-Textile requires no modifications to your Movable Type templates.

Textile is Dean Allen's "humane web text generator", an easy-to-write and easy-to-read shorthand for writing text for the web. An online Textile web application is available at Mr. Allen's site:

    http://textism.com/tools/textile/

Movable Type

SmartyPants works with Movable Type version 2.5 or later.

1.

Copy the "SmartyPants.pl" file into your Movable Type "plugins" directory. The "plugins" directory should be in the same directory as "mt.cgi"; if it doesn't already exist, use your FTP program to create it. Your installation should look like this:

    (mt home)/plugins/SmartyPants.pl
    

2.

If you're using SmartyPants with Brad Choate's MT-Textile, you're done.

If not, to activate SmartyPants on your weblog, you need to edit your MT templates. The easiest way is to add the "smarty_pants" attribute to each MT template tag whose contents you wish to apply SmartyPants' transformations. Obvious tags would include "MTEntryTitle", "MTEntryBody", and "MTEntryMore". SmartyPants should work within any MT content tag.

For example, to apply SmartyPants to your entry titles:

    <$MTEntryTitle smarty_pants="1"$>
    

The value passed to "smarty_pants" specifies the way SmartyPants works. See "Options", below, for full details on all of the supported options.

Blosxom

SmartyPants works with Blosxom version 2.0 or later.

1.

Rename the "SmartyPants.pl" plug-in to "SmartyPants" (case is important). Movable Type requires plug-ins to have a ".pl" extension; Blosxom forbids it (at least as of this writing).

2.

Copy the "SmartyPants" plug-in file to your Blosxom plug-ins folder. If you're not sure where your Blosxom plug-ins folder is, see the Blosxom documentation for information.

3.

That's it. The entries in your weblog should now automatically have SmartyPants' default transformations applied.

4.

If you wish to configure SmartyPants' behavior, open the "SmartyPants" plug-in, and edit the value of the $smartypants_attr configuration variable, located near the top of the script. The default value is 1; see "Options", below, for the full list of supported values.

BBEdit

SmartyPants works with BBEdit 6.1 or later on Mac OS X; and BBEdit 5.1 or later on Mac OS 9 or earlier (provided you have MacPerl installed).

1.

Copy the "SmartyPants.pl" file to appropriate filters folder in your "BBEdit Support" folder. On Mac OS X, this should be:

    BBEdit Support:Unix Support:Unix Filters:
    

On Mac OS 9 or earlier, this should be:

    BBEdit Support:MacPerl Support: Perl Filters:
    

See the BBEdit documentation for more details on the location of these folders.

You can rename "SmartyPants.pl" to whatever you wish.

2.

That's it. To use SmartyPants, select some text in a BBEdit document, then choose SmartyPants from the Filters sub-menu or the Filters floating palette. On Mac OS 9, the Filters sub-menu is in the "Camel" menu; on Mac OS X, it is in the "#!" menu.

3.

If you wish to configure SmartyPants' behavior, open the SmartyPants file and edit the value of the $smartypants_attr configuration variable, located near the top of the script. The default value is 1; see "Options", below, for the full list of supported values.

smarty_pants

For MT users, the "smarty_pants" template tag attribute is where you specify configuration options. For Blosxom and BBEdit users, settings are specified by editing the value of the $smartypants_attr variable in the script itself.

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. This is useful if you are using SmartyPants from Brad Choate's MT-Textile text filter, but wish to suppress smart punctuation in specific MT templates, such as RSS feeds. Text filters do their work before templates are processed; but you can use smarty_pants="-1" to reverse the transformations in specific templates.

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:

    <$MTFoo smarty_pants="qd"$>

"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:

    <$MTFoo smarty_pants="qDew"$>
    

For Blosxom and BBEdit users, set:

    my $smartypants_attr = "qDew";
    

Deprecated MT Attributes

The following Movable Type attributes are supported only for compatibility with older versions of SmartyPants. They are obsoleted by the "smarty_pants" attribute, which offers more control than these individual attributes. If you're setting up SmartyPants for the first time, you should use the "SmartyPants" attribute instead.

Blosxom and BBEdit users should simply ignore this section.

smart_quotes

The smart_quotes attribute accepts the following values:

"0"

Suppress all quote education. (Do nothing.)

"1"

Default behavior. Educates normal quote characters: (") and (').

"2"

Educate ``backticks'' -style double quotes (in addition to educating regular quotes). Transforms each instance of two consecutive backtick characters (``) into an opening double-quote, and each instance of two consecutive apostrophes ('') into a closing double-quote.

smart_dashes

The smart_dashes attribute accepts the following values:

"0"

Suppress dash education. (Do nothing.)

"1"

Default behavior. Transforms each instance of "--" (dash dash) into an HTML entity-encoded em-dash.

"2"

Educates both en- and em-dashes, using the old-school typewriter shorthand for dashes. Each instance of "--" (dash dash) is turned into an HTML entity-encoded en-dash; each instance of "---" (dash dash dash) is turned into an em-dash.

"3"

Same as smart_dashes="2", but inverts the shorthand, using "--" (dash dash) for em-dashes, and "---" (dash dash dash) for en-dashes. Although somewhat counterintuitive in that the longer shortcut is used for the shorter dash, this syntax is backwards compatible with SmartyPants 1.0's original syntax, which used (dash dash) for em-dashes.

smart_ellipses

The smart_ellipses attribute accepts the following values:

"0"

Suppress ellipsis education. (Do nothing.)

"1"

Default behavior. Transforms each instance of "..." (dot dot dot) into an HTML entity-encoded ellipsis. If there are four consecutive dots, SmartyPants assumes this means "full stop" followed by "ellipsis".

Version Info Tag

If you include this tag in a Movable Type template:

    <$MTSmartyPantsVersion$>

it will be replaced with a string representing the version number of the installed version of SmartyPants, e.g. "1.2".

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 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:

    the '80s
    'Twas the night before Christmas.

In both cases above, SmartyPants will turn the apostrophes into opening single-quotes, when in fact they should be closing ones. 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.

(I should also note that my personal style is to abbreviate decades like this:

    the 80's

so admittedly, I'm not all that interested in solving this problem.)