typo.el includes two modes, typo-mode and typo-global-mode.
typo-mode is a buffer-specific minor mode that will change a number
of normal keys to make them insert typographically useful unicode
characters. Some of those keys can be used repeatedly to cycle through
variations. This includes in particular quotation marks and dashes.
typo-global-mode introduces a global minor mode which adds the
C-c 8 prefix to complement Emacs’ default C-x 8 prefix map.
See the documentation of typo-mode and typo-global-mode for
further details.
“He said, ‘leave me alone,’ and closed the door.”
All quotation marks in this sentence were added by hitting the " key exactly once each. typo.el guessed the correct glyphs to use from context. If it gets it wrong, you can just repeat hitting the " key until you get the quotation mark you wanted.
M-x typo-change-language lets you change which quotation marks to
use in a single buffer. To change globally, add
(setq-default typo-language <language>) to your initialization
files. This is also configurable, in case you want to add your own.
The hyphen key will insert a default hyphen-minus glyph. On repeated use, though, it will cycle through the en-dash, em-dash, and a number of other dash-like glyphs available in Unicode. This means that typing two dashes inserts an en-dash and typing three dashes inserts an em-dash, as would be expected. The name of the currently inserted dash is shown in the minibuffer.
The full stop key will self-insert as usual. When three dots are inserted in a row, though, they are replaced by a horizontal ellipsis glyph.
Tick and backtick keys insert the appropriate quotation mark as well. The less-than and greater-than signs cycle insert the default glyphs on first use, but cycle through double and single guillemets on repeated use.
In addition to the above, typo-global-mode also provides a
globally-accessible key map under the C-c 8 prefix (akin to Emacs’
default C-x 8 prefix map) to insert various Unicode characters.
In particular, C-c 8 SPC will insert a no-break space. Continued use
of SPC after this will cycle through half a dozen different space
types available in Unicode.
Check the mode’s documentation for more details.
Download typo.el and put it somewhere in your load-path.
Add the following to your .emacs:
(typo-global-mode 1)
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'typo-mode)Unicode supports ligatures (ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl). This is nice, but quite a lot of fonts lack support for this. Also, it could be argued that ligatures should happen as part of the display process, not in the document. Use ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER (C-c 8 SPC SPC SPC) to prevent two characters from being merged like this.
Until fonts widely support ligatures, typo.el will not support them.