Single-key teletype?

Question

I'm writing a document with a ton of pseudocode and it's very tedious to keep wrapping code objects in {\tt text}. It would be so much nicer to, well, do what StackExchange does! There's a one-character symbol, the back-tick, just like for math there's the dollar-sign. Is there any way to accomplish the same thing in LaTeX?

Unrelated: don't use two-letter font change commands (\tt, \bf, etc.) in LaTeX. Use the proper more-letter variants (\ttfamily, \bfseries, etc.) — Phelype Oleinik, Jun 07 '19 at 19:58

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 06 '19 at 20:02

15

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{shortvrb}
\MakeShortVerb|
\begin{document}

this |and| that or |the other|

\end{document}

shortvrb is in the core base latex distribution.

answered Jun 06 '19 at 20:02

David Carlisle

757,742

I suspect this is conflicting with the vertical bars that I'm using to declare borders in tabular environments. Is that right, and if so, do you happen to know a fix? – Addem Jun 08 '19 at 18:01
1

@Addem you can turn it off before the table (\DeleteShortVerb| ) or use any other character that you do not use, such as \MakeShortVerb! or any other character – David Carlisle Jun 08 '19 at 18:04

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 06 '19 at 20:00

11

Use fancyvrb and \DefineShortVerb (although you might not want to use `)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fancyvrb}
\DefineShortVerb\`
\begin{document}
I'm writing a document with a ton of pseudocode and it's very tedious to keep wrapping code objects in
`{\tt text}`. It would be so much nicer to, well, do what StackExchange does! There's a one-character
symbol, the back-tick, just like for math there's the dollar-sign. Is there any way to accomplish the same
thing in LaTeX?
\end{document}

answered Jun 06 '19 at 20:00

Phelype Oleinik

70,814

This might cause problems when you want to use quotation marks. A chacter like | or @ might be more suitable – AJF Jun 07 '19 at 19:46
@AJFarmar That's exactly why I said "you might not want to use `", I just used it to imitate the markdown syntax (I could've used more emphasis on that warning, though :-). – Phelype Oleinik Jun 07 '19 at 19:56

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 11 '23 at 16:38

4

What StackExchange does is markdown, so you can also use the markdown package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{markdown}
\begin{document}
\begin{markdown}
This `and` that or `the other` 
\end{markdown}
\end{document}

Or more simple, write a markdown file and export it to LaTeX:

This `and` that or `the other`

The bonus point of this approach is avoid also many other tedious commands, not only those for verbatim text.

edited Oct 11 '23 at 16:38

JamesT

3,169

answered Jun 07 '19 at 05:37

Fran

80,769

I hope you don't mind me adding a link to the package - it was new to me and presumably to others, and looks useful – Chris H Jun 07 '19 at 07:54

Single-key teletype?

3 Answers3

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