[R] Fancy quotes on Windows

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 11/6/2009 11:30 AM, James W. MacDonald wrote:
> 
> Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 11/6/2009 10:40 AM, James W. MacDonald wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I don't use Windows as my primary OS anymore, so didn't notice this 
>>> until recently. In R-2.10.0 under Windows useFancyQuotes is FALSE by 
>>> default, but this doesn't seem to affect the rendering of (text) help 
>>> pages.
>>>
>>> This is not a problem if I run via the Rgui or Rterm (via DOS prompt), 
>>> as the help pages are rendered in a popup window that understands 
>>> directional quotes. However, if I run under emacs/ESS, the help is 
>>> rendered within emacs, which doesn't understand directional quotes, so 
>>> any quoted text is surrounded by \221thetext\222, which is obviously 
>>> difficult to read.
>>>
>>> Is there another setting that I am missing that affects the usage of 
>>> directional quotes for the help pages?
>> 
>> I don't see this.  Are you sure you haven't got a typo somewhere?
> 
> Pretty sure. I get the opposite:
> 
> Loading required package: utils
>  > options("useFancyQuotes")
> $useFancyQuotes
> [1] FALSE
> 
>  > ?mean
> 
> This is at a DOS prompt. In the popup box I get
> 
> If ‘trim’ is zero (the default), the arithmetic mean of the
>       values in ‘x’ is computed, as a numeric or complex vector of

I think I saw this once, but have been unable to reproduce it since 
then.  I may have had useFancyQuotes=TRUE on that one occasion.

Since I can no longer reproduce this, and looking at the code shows no 
reason it shouldn't be deterministic, I'm going to have to give up on it.

All I can suggest is that you should re-install R, preferably from the 
2.10.0 patched version.  It has a few bug fixes since the release, and 
whatever was causing the problem for you may have gone away.

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> Also, from ?sQuote:
> 
> Where fancy quotes are used, you should be aware that they may not
>       be rendered correctly as not all fonts include the requisite
>       glyphs: for example some have directional single quotes but not
>       directional double quotes.  This is particularly troublesome in
>       Windows ‘Command Prompt’ windows, which by default are set up
>       to run in the so-called OEM codepage, which in most locales uses a
>       different encoding from Windows.  Further, if the codepage is
>       changed (with ‘chcp.exe’, e.g. to 1252 in a Western European
>       language), the default raster fonts do not support the directional
>       quotes.
> 
>       To work around this, the default for
>       ‘options("useFancyQuotes")’ is ‘FALSE’ on Windows except
>       for the ‘Rgui’ console.  There fancy quotes work with the
>       default Courier New font and more elegantly with Lucida Console
>       and standard the CJK fonts, but directional double quotes are
>       missing in raster fonts such as Courier and FixedSys.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> When I run options("useFancyQuotes") in a new session, I see
>> 
>>  > options("useFancyQuotes")
>> $useFancyQuotes
>> [1] TRUE
>> 
>> and when I ask for help, I see help pages that respect that choice, e.g.
>> 
>>  > ?mean
>> 
>> gives ‘trim = 0’ in the description of x.  If I set
>> 
>>  > options(useFancyQuotes=FALSE)
>>  > ?mean
>> 
>> I see 'trim = 0'.
>> 
>> Maybe if there's no typo, it's emacs or ESS that's messing up somehow.
>> 
>> Duncan Murdoch
>