Following the previous questions on this topic, when you produce a website in LaTeX what is the best way to produce a url that contains a tilde? \verb produces the upper tilde that does not read well, and $\sim$ does not copy/pase well (adding a space when I do it). Solutions?
It seems like this should be one of those things that has a very easy fix... if it doesn't, why not?
\symbol{126} would be another way, but in the default font it also yields a superscripted tilde. An ugly hack (but what isn't in LaTeX) would be to use
${}_{\textrm{\symbol{126}}}$
which produces a text tilde in Math mode and subscripts it. So it appears in the middle of the line. Seems to work for a clickable link as well. You can always put that into a command on its own :)
I'm not a latex user admittedly, but does this page help?
http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~mgeorg/html/tildalatex.html
They do the following:
\def\urltilda{\kern -.15em\lower .7ex\hbox{\~{}}\kern .04em}
\def\urldot{\kern -.10em.\kern -.10em}
\def\urlhttp{http\kern -.10em\lower -.1ex\hbox{:}\kern -.12em\lower 0ex\hbox{/}\kern -.18em\lower 0ex\hbox{/}}
The way this is used is
{\tt mgeorg@cse\urldot wustl\urldot edu}
{\tt \urlhttp www\urldot cse\urldot wustl\urldot edu/\urltilda mgeorg}
I know this is an old question, but I recently came up with something that, despite a severe lack of elegance, works beautifully.
\catcode`~=11 % make LaTeX treat tilde (~) like a normal character
\newcommand{\urltilde}{\kern -.15em\lower .7ex\hbox{~}\kern .04em}
\catcode`~=13 % revert back to treating tilde (~) as an active character
Now you can use \urltilde inside of a \url tag (even in a .bib file) and: 1) the URL will render perfectly; 2) clicking on the URL will take you to the correct address; and, 3) copy-paste will put the correct address in the clipboard.
This is the only solution I have found that satisfies all three of these requirements. I hope it helps somebody out there.