PHP SmartyPants

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Library: for developers

PHP SmartyPants Lib 1.8.1 (17 Kb): Library package for developers. Requires PHP 5.3. Also available on Packagist et and Github. December 12, 2016.

Classic Version: plugin for WordPress, Smarty, etc.

Classic version → PHP SmartyPants & PHP SmartyPants Typographer: Important: classic version of PHP SmartyPants and PHP SmartyPants Typographer is no longer being supported. If you’re a developer using PHP 5.3 or later, you should probably use the Lib version above.

Introduction

This is a library package that includes the PHP SmartyPants and its sibling PHP SmartyPants Typographer with additional features.

SmartyPants is a free web typography prettifyier tool for web writers. It easily translates plain ASCII punctuation characters into “smart” typographic punctuation HTML entities.

PHP SmartyPants is a port to PHP of the original SmartyPants written in Perl by John Gruber.

SmartyPants can perform the following transformations:

Straight quotes (" and ') into “curly” quote HTML entities
Backtick-style quotes (``like this'') into “curly” quote HTML entities
Dashes (-- and ---) into en- and em-dash entities
Three consecutive dots (...) into an ellipsis entity

SmartyPants Typographer can perform additional transformations:

French guillemets done using (<< and >>) into true « guillemets » HTML entities.
Comma-style quotes (,,like this`` or ''like this,,) into their curly equivalent.
Replace existing spaces with non-break spaces around punctuation marks where appropriate, can also add or remove them if configured to.
Replace existing spaces with non-break spaces for spaces used as a thousand separator and between a number and the unit symbol that follows it (for most common units).

This means you can write, edit, and save using plain old ASCII straight quotes, plain dashes, and plain dots, but your published posts (and final HTML output) will appear with smart quotes, em-dashes, proper ellipses, and proper no-break spaces (with Typographer).

SmartyPants does not modify characters within <pre>, <code>, <kbd>, or <script> tag blocks. Typically, these tags are used to display text where smart quotes and other “smart punctuation” would not be appropriate, such as source code or example markup.

Backslash Escapes

If you need to use literal straight quotes (or plain hyphens and periods), SmartyPants accepts the following backslash escape sequences to force non-smart punctuation. It does so by transforming the escape sequence into a decimal-encoded HTML entity:

Escape	Value	Character
`\\`	`\`	`\`
`\"`	`"`	`"`
`\'`	`'`	`'`
`\.`	`.`	`.`
`\-`	`-`	`-`
\`	```	`

This is useful, for example, when you want to use straight quotes as foot and inch marks:

6\'2\" tall

translates into:

6&#39;2&#34; tall

in SmartyPants’s HTML output. Which, when rendered by a web browser, looks like:

6'2" tall

Installation and Requirement

This library package requires PHP 5.3 or later.

Note: The older plugin/library hybrid package for PHP SmartyPants and PHP SmartyPants Typographer is still will work with PHP 4.0.5 and later.

Usage

This library package is meant to be used with class autoloading. For autoloading to work, your project needs have setup a PSR-0-compatible autoloader. See the included Readme.php file for a minimal autoloader setup. (If you don’t want to use autoloading you can do a classic require_once to manually include the files prior use instead.)

With class autoloading in place, putting the ‘Michelf’ folder in your include path should be enough for this to work:

use Michelf\SmartyPants;
$html_output = SmartyPants::defaultTransform($html_input);

SmartyPants Typographer is also available the same way:

use Michelf\SmartyPantsTypographer;
$html_output = SmartyPantsTypographer::defaultTransform($html_input);

If you are using PHP SmartyPants with another text filter function that generates HTML such as Markdown, you should filter the text after the HTML-generating filter. This is an example with PHP Markdown:

use Michelf\Markdown, Michelf\SmartyPants;
$my_html = Markdown::defaultTransform($my_text);
$my_html = SmartyPants::defaultTransform($my_html);

To learn more about configuration options, see the full list of configuration variables.

Usage Without an Autoloader

If you cannot use class autoloading, you can still use include or require to access the parser. To load the Michelf\SmartyPants parser, do it this way:

require_once 'Michelf/SmartyPants.inc.php';

Or, if you need the Michelf\SmartyPantsTypographer parser:

require_once 'Michelf/SmartyPantsTypographer.inc.php';

While the plain .php files depend on autoloading to work correctly, using the .inc.php files instead will eagerly load the dependencies that would be loaded on demand if you were using autoloading.

Algorithmic Shortcomings

One situation in which quotes will get curled the wrong way is when apostrophes are used at the start of leading contractions. For example:

'Twas the night before Christmas.

In the case above, SmartyPants will turn the apostrophe into an opening single-quote, when in fact it should be a closing one. I don’t think this problem can be solved in the general case — every word processor I’ve tried gets this wrong as well. In such cases, it’s best to use the proper HTML entity for closing single-quotes (’ or ’) by hand.

Bugs

To file bug reports or feature requests (other than topics listed in the Caveats section above) please send email to:

michel.fortin@michelf.ca

If the bug involves quotes being curled the wrong way, please send example text to illustrate.

Copyright and License

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name “SmartyPants” nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.