[WORKAROUND] LaTeX quotation mechanism is broken

[vitaminace33]

Description

The LaTeX quotation mechanism has been broken recently (1 week or less, I would say). I don't know if Spacemacs is to blame or some other package. A pure, clean Emacs session with uptodate AUCTeX works as expected.

Reproduction guide 🪲

1. Create the following test file, test.tex.

\documentclass{minimal}
%\usepackage[german]{babel}
\begin{document}

Write a quoted word above.%
Write a quoted word below.%

\end{document}

2. In a clean Emacs installation, rm -r ~/.emacs*, install AUCTeX, M-x package-install RET auctex RET, and add the following to ~/.emacs.

(setq TeX-parse-self t) ; Enable parse on load.
(setq TeX-auto-save t)  ; Enable parse on save.

3. Restart and visit test.tex. Press double quote " once to get a two backticks ``, and twice to get a literal double quote ". Write something and press double quote " again once, two single quotes '', or twice,literal double quote ", to close the quote.

\documentclass{minimal}
%\usepackage[german]{babel}
\begin{document}
``Once''
Write a quoted word above.%
Write a quoted word below.%
"Twice"
\end{document}

4. Clear (undo) changes, uncomment babel's line, save the file, restart and repeat the experiment (with now German quotation).

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage[german]{babel}
\begin{document}
"Once"
Write a quoted word above.%
Write a quoted word below.%
"`Twice"'
\end{document}

5. Repeat the experiments 3 and 4 with Spacemacs (with LaTeX's layer). English quotation will work as expected, with a slight change: Pressing " will insert directly both opening and closing quotation marks (with cursor in between), ``''. German quotation (an any other language style) breaks: Pressing " erases or swaps some characters of the previous line and wrong chars are inserted. Perhaps the package that changes the English behavior is now breaking the other styles.

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage[german]{babel}
\begin{document''  % Closing bracket deleted and two single quotes inserted.
`                  % A single backtick inserted.
Write a quoted word above.%
Write a quoted word below''.% The .% ignored and two single quotes inserted.
`                  % A single backtick inserted.
\end{document}

Observed behaviour: 👀 💔
If German (or other language) style is activated, \usepackage[german]{babel}, pressing " erases or swaps some characters of the previous line and wrong chars are inserted.

Expected behaviour: ❤️ 😄
If German (or other language) style is activated, \usepackage[german]{babel}, pressing " once should insert "`"', twice "".

System Info 💻

• OS: gnu/linux
• Emacs: 27.1
• Spacemacs: 0.300.0
• Spacemacs branch: develop (rev. d9c3dc6)
• Graphic display: t
• Distribution: spacemacs
• Editing style: emacs
• Completion: helm
• Layers:

(emacs-lisp helm latex multiple-cursors treemacs)

• System configuration features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG CAIRO SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY INOTIFY ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE HARFBUZZ M17N_FLT LIBOTF ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 XDBE XIM MODULES THREADS XWIDGETS LIBSYSTEMD JSON PDUMPER LCMS2 GMP

[vitaminace33]

WORKAROUND

When the 4th element of TeX-quote-language is nil and both quote marks, 2nd and 3rd elements, are (non escaped) single characters, then the quotation mechanism works although not as expected for Spacemacs.

Add this snippet in dotspacemacs/user-config

  (add-hook 'TeX-language-de-hook
    (lambda ()
      (add-to-list 'TeX-quote-language-alist '("german" "\"`" "\"'" nil))))

It will override the default German style. Now, if you press " once, it will insert "`' instead of "`"', as expected (the escaped double quote is missing for some reason).

Rather than using TeX primitives for the Latin quotation marks, use UTF-8 chars.

  (add-hook 'TeX-language-de-hook
    (lambda ()
      (add-to-list 'TeX-quote-language-alist '("german" "«" "»" nil))))

Now, if you press " once, it will insert « instead of «», as expected in Spacemacs, but you can still close it pressing " once after having written some text.

[lebensterben]

You should directly changing TeX-quote-language-alist.
The first element "german" runs TeX-language-de-hook.

Your workaround is self-referencing.

[vitaminace33]

No, it is not, the hook is triggered by the german option for babel's package. AUCTeX, after parsing, applies the appropriate style, namely, german.el, which sets TeX-quote-language to ("german" "\"`" "\"'" t) and then calls TeX-language-de-hook. My workaround uses the hook to set TeX-quote-language-alist to ( ("german" "«" "»" nil) ), since the car of its only element coincides with the car of TeX-quote-language, it overrides it.

"German" is not a good label for the issue since this can happen for any language.

[lebensterben]

The quotations you preferred is not the default for German.
You can use French.

https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Typesetting_quotations#Reference_guide

[lebensterben]

try to disable smartparens-mode first

[vitaminace33]

Good suggestion, after successfully disabling smartparens by adding it to dotspacemacs-excluded-packages, the quotation mark mechanism works as expected, that is, as in regular Emacs. I did suspect that the package electrifying pairs was the culprit, but I don't know how to continue from here.

[vitaminace33]

The quotations you preferred is not the default for German.
You can use French.

https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Typesetting_quotations#Reference_guide

I am to rewrite most language styles because some are missing and others are simply wrong. Still, this doesn't solve smartparens breaking quotations.

[lebensterben]

@vitaminace33 you don't have to exclude this package all together.
Just have dotspacemacs-smartparens-strict-mode and dotspacemacs-activate-smartparens-mode set to nil.

spacemacs/core/templates/.spacemacs.template

Lines 408 to 415 in b1c9ddc

	;; If non-nil and `dotspacemacs-activate-smartparens-mode' is also non-nil,
	;; `smartparens-strict-mode' will be enabled in programming modes.
	;; (default nil)
	dotspacemacs-smartparens-strict-mode nil
	;; If non-nil smartparens-mode will be enabled in programming modes.
	;; (default t)
	dotspacemacs-activate-smartparens-mode t

Another way is to add a hook to LaTeX-mode-hook that turn off smartparens mode.

[vitaminace33]

Thx @lebensterben, I went fast and furious ;-)

I notified upstream.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Please let us know if this issue is still valid!