Processed: Re: Bug#1002501: release-notes: Quotes (" and ') in commands in PDF release notes are "smart" (”*” / ’hold$’) so don't copy/paste

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

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Bug #1002501 [release-notes] release-notes: Quotes (" and ') in commands in PDF release notes are "smart" (”*” / ’hold$’) so don't copy/paste
Added tag(s) help.

[Paul Gevers]

Control: tag -1 help

Hi Alan,

Thanks for your report.

As the subject says really. Quotes (" and ') in commands in the PDF Release
Notes are "smart"/slanted (e.g. ”*” / ’hold$’) so when commands are copied from
the pdf and pasted into a shell, they don't work. It's necessary to edit the
command to put "straight" quotes into the command instead.
(Annoying and unnecessary!)
PDF I used: "Release Notes for Debian 11 (bullseye), 64-bit PC | December 14, 2021"

The release notes are generated with docbook. I spend about an hour to
find out how to prevent conversion of straight quotes to curly quotes,
but I failed. I don't know how to fix this bug. The html version get it
right, so I expect the issue to be in how LaTeX is called. If anybody
knows how docbook and LaTeX work together and how to fix it, much
appreciated.

Paul

I tried replacing " with " and " but both were still converted
to curly quotes.

Paul

[Hendrik Boom]

Post by Paul Gevers
Control: tag -1 help
Hi Alan,
Thanks for your report.

As the subject says really. Quotes (" and ') in commands in the PDF Release
Notes are "smart"/slanted (e.g. ”*” / ’hold$’) so when commands are copied from
the pdf and pasted into a shell, they don't work. It's necessary to edit the
command to put "straight" quotes into the command instead.
(Annoying and unnecessary!)
PDF I used: "Release Notes for Debian 11 (bullseye), 64-bit PC | December 14, 2021"

It's quit a trick to get straight quotes in TeX even if you hand-code the TeX file.
There's a TeX module calles ascii.something (I forget the file type). It defines coding for the ascii characters.

I don't know how this relates to Docbook, though.

-- hendrik

Post by Paul Gevers
The release notes are generated with docbook. I spend about an hour to find
out how to prevent conversion of straight quotes to curly quotes, but I
failed. I don't know how to fix this bug. The html version get it right, so
I expect the issue to be in how LaTeX is called. If anybody knows how
docbook and LaTeX work together and how to fix it, much appreciated.
Paul
I tried replacing " with " and " but both were still converted to
curly quotes.
Paul

[James Addison]

Package: release-notes
Followup-For: Bug #1002501

Post by Paul Gevers
The release notes are generated with docbook. I spend about an hour to
find out how to prevent conversion of straight quotes to curly quotes

Funny how it's sometimes the seemingly-simple fixes that prove the most
infuriating to fix, isn't it? :)

I spent a significantly longer amount of time on this one; I learned fairly
early on that the 'upquote' LaTeX package was a potential fix (thanks to
aerostitch[1] and postgis[2]), but in practice getting that to work with
the PDF documentation generation involved various failed attempts.

However..

In addition to including the 'upquote' package, it seems that a combination of
two additional changes[3] produces the desired result:

* Using single straight quotes instead of double quotes

* Placing the relevant text within a 'screen' docbook element

Fortunately single-quotes is probably a safer and better recommendation anyway
since it's generally less prone to globbing, at least in bash.

(note: I also had to temporarily rename some font filenames[4] locally in order
for the build to succeed when using 'make pdf LINGUA=en architecture=arm64')

[1] - https://aerostitch.github.io/misc/asciidoc/asciidoc-pdf_keep_quotes.html

[2] - https://github.com/postgis/postgis/pull/128

[3] - https://salsa.debian.org/jayaddison/release-notes/-/commit/4922a80e12db746de8bf8cad45d4fe63d43d9f90

[4] - https://salsa.debian.org/jayaddison/release-notes/-/blob/4922a80e12db746de8bf8cad45d4fe63d43d9f90/Makefile#L82-85

[Holger Wansing]

Hi,

Post by James Addison
In addition to including the 'upquote' package, it seems that a combination of
* Using single straight quotes instead of double quotes
* Placing the relevant text within a 'screen' docbook element

I have tested James' proposal, and it seems fine to implement.
I compared two versions of r-n (with and without the use of upquote) site-by-site,
and that showed no site effects, but it does the desired change of keeping
single quotes unchanged.

So I would vote for merging it.

Post by James Addison
[3] - https://salsa.debian.org/jayaddison/release-notes/-/commit/4922a80e12db746de8bf8cad45d4fe63d43d9f90
[4] - https://salsa.debian.org/jayaddison/release-notes/-/blob/4922a80e12db746de8bf8cad45d4fe63d43d9f90/Makefile#L82-85

Holger

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Your message dated Sat, 4 Mar 2023 19:22:57 +0100
with message-id <10bb4ff6-0b31-0e70-9801-***@debian.org>
and subject line Re: Bug#1002501: release-notes: Quotes (" and ') in commands in PDF release notes are "smart" (”*” / ’hold$’) so don't copy/paste
has caused the Debian Bug report #1002501,
regarding release-notes: Quotes (" and ') in commands in PDF release notes are "smart" (”*” / ’hold$’) so don't copy/paste
to be marked as done.

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