How to replace double quotes with typographer's quotes (aka curly quotes)

Question

I need to programatically replace "regular double quotes" with “typographer's quotes”

My initial thought is something like this:

     <xsl:variable name="text">
      <xsl:call-template name="replace-string"><!-- FYI: replace-string is a custom method that works like you would expect-->
       <xsl:with-param name="text" select="."/>
       <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="string(' &quot;')" /><!-- left quote because of space before -->
       <xsl:with-param name="with" select="string('“')"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
     </xsl:variable>

     <xsl:variable name="text2">
      <xsl:call-template name="replace-string">
       <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text"/>
       <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="string('&quot; ')" /><!-- right quote because of space after -->
       <xsl:with-param name="with" select="string('”')"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
     </xsl:variable>

     <xsl:apply-templates select="$text2" />

My worry is situations where there is not a determining space by the quote. Such as these.

They say "this is great". I like tigers ("big large cats").

Has anyone ever had to do this before that knows some extra rules to apply or a different strategy?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Regular Expressions.

regex:replace($textVariable, '"([^"]*)"' , 'gi', '“$1”')

Havent tested this, but this is an easy approach IMHO. you match all "(anything not ")zero or more times" and replace that with your other typographical quotes. The $1 is a back-reference to the first match. While there are issues here such as incorrectly nested text, quotes that are not closed etc., I am suggesting something like this. You may rewrite the regex for this one and test it out.

This is assuming that your XSLT processor supports the EXSLT extensions.

Answer 2

A solution that works without extension functions would be:

<xsl:template name="typograpic-quotes">
  <xsl:param name="text"    select="''" />
  <xsl:param name="quote"   select="'&quot;'" />
  <xsl:param name="open"    select="'“'" />
  <xsl:param name="close"   select="'”'" />
  <xsl:param name="inquote" select="false()" />

  <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="contains($text, $quote)">
      <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($text, $quote)" />
      <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="$inquote">
          <xsl:value-of select="$close" />
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
          <xsl:value-of select="$open" />
        </xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:choose>
      <xsl:call-template name="typograpic-quotes">
        <xsl:with-param name="text"    select="substring-after($text, $quote)" />
        <xsl:with-param name="quote"   select="$quote" />
        <xsl:with-param name="open"    select="$open" />
        <xsl:with-param name="close"   select="$close" />
        <xsl:with-param name="inquote" select="not($inquote)" />
      </xsl:call-template>
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
      <xsl:value-of select="$text" />
    </xsl:otherwise>
  </xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

Needless to say that unbalanced quotes in the input will make this fail.

Answer 3

Because we have some unbalanced quotes. I am working on something a little more pragmatic. The below seems to work in all cases I have tried.

 <!-- Get text.  All quotes defaulted to right quote -->
     <xsl:variable name="text">
      <xsl:call-template name="replace-string">
       <xsl:with-param name="text" select="."/>
       <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="string('&quot;')" />
       <xsl:with-param name="with" select="string('”')"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
     </xsl:variable>

     <!-- Turn quotes preceded by a space into left quote -->
     <xsl:variable name="text2">
      <xsl:call-template name="replace-string">
       <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text"/>
       <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="string(' ”')" />
       <!-- right quote because of space after -->
       <xsl:with-param name="with" select="string(' “')"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
     </xsl:variable>

     <!-- Turn quotes preceded by a parenthesy into left quote -->
     <xsl:variable name="text3">
      <xsl:call-template name="replace-string">
       <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text2"/>
       <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="string('(”')" />
       <!-- right quote because of space after -->
       <xsl:with-param name="with" select="string('(“')"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
     </xsl:variable>

     <!-- Turn quotes that are the first character in the text into left quote -->
     <!-- Note: this one is still a little funky. For some reason the first character is always whitespace.  So I am checking the second character because it is really the first. -->
     <xsl:variable name="text4" >
      <xsl:choose>
       <xsl:when test="normalize-space(substring( $text3, 2, 2 )) = string('”')">
        <xsl:value-of select="string('“')"/>
        <xsl:value-of select="substring($text3, 3)"/>
       </xsl:when>
       <xsl:otherwise>
        <xsl:value-of select="$text3"/>
       </xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:choose>
     </xsl:variable>

     <xsl:apply-templates select="$text4" />