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Shaloha,

My Emacs/AUCTeX combination used to automatically replace a single open quote ' with an accent `, as is required by LaTeX. Many machines and .emacs files later, it doesn't do that anymore. I suppose it's an AUCTeX option, but I couldn't find it. (I thought it would be in the Tex Quote AUCTeX customization menu, but no.)

How can I make the single open quote ' automatically replaced by `?

Quinn Culver
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  • I just realized that I might be misremembering; maybe my Emacs/AUCTeX combo only automatically replaced double quotes. It still does that. The question stands though. – Quinn Culver Jun 22 '13 at 15:56
  • If you really want to automatically insert a "" by pressing "'" you can put this in your.emacs:(define-key TeX-mode-map "'" "") but I'm not sure this is really a good idea. "'" is different from "", LaTeX doesn't require "" instead of "'". – giordano Jun 22 '13 at 15:58
  • Your question is a bit confusing. Emacs could obviously reolace the character but is that really what you mean? ' is an apostrophe as in it's or a single right close quote. Or perhaps you mean you want to just replace ' by \`` on every other occasion so'foo'turns in to`foo'` ? – David Carlisle Jun 22 '13 at 19:41
  • @DavidCarlisle I suppose you're right. What about replacing ' by ` whenever it's the first character of a new word? – Quinn Culver Jun 22 '13 at 19:43
  • @QuinnCulver don't you have the backtick in your keyboard layout? Anyway, if you want I can provide you a function for inserting by pressing'` when the preceding character isn't a letter. – giordano Jun 24 '13 at 09:48
  • @giordano I have the backtick. Unfortunately, I also have the habit of begining quotes with '. I think this is why AUCTeX replaces opening double quotes. That function would be quite helpful. If you provide it as an answer, I'll try it and probably accept it. – Quinn Culver Jun 24 '13 at 13:03

1 Answers1

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Add the following code to your .emacs. It binds the ' key to a function which inserts an apostrophe if the preceding char is a letter, a digit, a backslash (because \` and \' give two different accents in LaTeX) or another apostrophe (to cater for LaTeX ``quotes''), a backtick otherwise.

(eval-after-load "tex"
  '(define-key TeX-mode-map "'"
     '(lambda ()
    (interactive)
    (if (string-match "\\([[:alnum:]]\\|\\\\\\|'\\)" (string (char-before)))
        (insert "'")
      (insert  "`")))))
giordano
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