In-prose bracket styling

Question

For stylistic reasons, I would like to ensure that parentheses use different characters for each level of nesting:

([{}]).

I would like this to be upheld in the main body (as well as citations, footnotes, etc.) unless overruled by ie. listings, verbatim, math-mode etc.

I can do it myself for most of it, but eg. in citations, I cannot - not without defining a command specifically for that (I have only toyed with the very basics of defining commands).

Thank you.

What exactly is the question here? Are you looking for general guidance how to approach this? (What would that be?) Or specific solutions for the particular issues you are facing? (In that case we need to know what those issues are.) — moewe, Jan 08 '19 at 16:05
An example for what is already available is biblatex. biblatex usually typesets its brackets and parentheses with \mkbibparens and \mkbibbrackets and those command have support for different forms at different nesting levels if they are used all the way: \mkbibparens{Lorem \parencite{sigfridsson}} produces "(Lorem [Sigfridsson und Ryde 1998])" in the authoryear style while \parencite{sigfridsson} produces just "(Sigfridsson und Ryde 1998)". But not all packages and commands will have something like this. \ref, for example, would need to be modified. — moewe, Jan 08 '19 at 16:08
Edit: actually, hum. I believe /mkbibparens probably solves the issue. — Kartöfluvofan, Jan 08 '19 at 16:09
Mhhh, I guess I'm trying to say that there is no simple way to have this 'just work for everything'. It would be sort of straightforward to implement a macro \myparens that nests properly with itself. But when you want it to interact with other commands, (\cite, \ref) you'll probably have to patch all those that add some kind of parentheses. And then it becomes extremely important which commands you want to work with and how they are defined (i.e. which packages you use). — moewe, Jan 08 '19 at 16:15
Was meant to append this above, but there's a commenting limit. Edit: actually, hum. I believe /mkbibparens probably solves the issue. Sorry, I really should have read the documentation properly before posting. It's been a long day, and I am somewhat tired - my worry was that if I added a certain parenthesis at one level of nesting, say, in a publication date (fex. 2007 [1892]) if these would remain relatively constant to the nesting level.
It's been a long day, sorry for the lacklustre responses and lack of pro-activity.

Thank you. — Kartöfluvofan, Jan 08 '19 at 16:21
That depends on how you added the parentheses, I guess. I would have to see an MWE to be sure (though then you would have found out what happens as well just by the fact that you can see the compiled result). \mkbibparens only does () and [] and alternates between the two. — moewe, Jan 08 '19 at 16:24
At present, the only package I am consciously aware of using nested parentheses by itself (excluding, say, listings) is biblatex, but I suspect I may be wrong. — Kartöfluvofan, Jan 08 '19 at 16:26

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 08 '19 at 16:54

A naive implementation of nestable parentheses is easily written

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\makeatletter
\newcount\kart@flu@parenlevel

\newcommand*{\kart@flu@paren@toodeep}{%
  \rule[0.25ex]{1.25ex}{1.25ex}%
}

\newcommand*{\kart@flu@paren@open}{%
  \advance\kart@flu@parenlevel\@ne
  \ifnum\kart@flu@parenlevel=\@ne
    (%
  \else
    \ifnum\kart@flu@parenlevel=\tw@
      [%
    \else
      \ifnum\kart@flu@parenlevel=\thr@@
        \{%
      \else
        \PackageWarning{myparens}{%
          Too deeply nested parentheses}%
        \kart@flu@paren@toodeep
      \fi 
    \fi
  \fi
}

\newcommand*{\kart@flu@paren@close}{%
  \ifnum\kart@flu@parenlevel=\@ne
    )%
  \else
    \ifnum\kart@flu@parenlevel=\tw@
      ]%
    \else
      \ifnum\kart@flu@parenlevel=\thr@@
        \}%
      \else
        \PackageWarning{myparens}{%
          Too deeply nested parentheses}%
        \kart@flu@paren@toodeep
      \fi 
    \fi
  \fi
  \advance\kart@flu@parenlevel\m@ne
}

\newcommand*{\kartparen}[1]{%
  \kart@flu@paren@open#1\kart@flu@paren@close}

\newcommand*{\kartparenopen}{\kart@flu@paren@open}
\newcommand*{\kartparenclose}{\kart@flu@paren@close}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\kartparen{Lorem \kartparen{ipsum} dolor}

\kartparen{Lorem \kartparen{ipsum \kartparen{dolor} sit} amet}

\kartparen{Lorem \kartparen{ipsum \kartparen{dolor \kartparen{sit} amet} concectur} donec}

\kartparen{Lorem\footnote{\kartparen{ipsum}} dolor}
\end{document}

With a bit more work this command could be changed so that brackets nest infinitely deep (the bracket type would then be determined by the modulo operation).

The hard part is to get it to interact with all other kinds of parentheses that might be added from other commands and sources beyond your manual control. There is no general solution to that problem and each command you want to work with probably needs to be patched manually.

Since you explicitly mention citations, biblatex has the commands \mkbibparens and \mkbibrackets as well as a few lower-level commands for this job. The commands are available outside of biblatex as well and interact as expected.

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[style=authoryear, backend=biber]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}


\begin{document}
\mkbibparens{Lorem \mkbibparens{ipsum} dolor}

\mkbibparens{Lorem \mkbibparens{ipsum \mkbibparens{dolor} sit} amet}

\mkbibparens{Lorem\footnote{\mkbibparens{ipsum}} dolor}

\mkbibparens{Lorem \parencite{sigfridsson}}

\parencite{sigfridsson}

\mkbibbrackets{Lorem \mkbibparens{ipsum} dolor}

\mkbibbrackets{Lorem \mkbibbrackets{ipsum} dolor}
\end{document}

In-prose bracket styling

1 Answers1