Straight quotes in tabbing

Question

I need to display source code using the tabbing environment and \sffamily. (Please note that I cannot use neither listings nor verbatim since I cannot dynamically set my tab stops).

I defined an environment sftabbing for doing this. A Minimal Working Example is as follows

\documentclass{article}

\newenvironment{sftabbing}
  {\par\sffamily\small\tabbing}
  {\endtabbing\par}

\begin{document}

\begin{sftabbing}
INSERT \= INTO Shippers(CompanyName, Phone) \\
\> VALUES ('Federal Express', '02 752 75 75') \\ \\
UPDATE \= Shippers \\
SET \> CompanyName='Fedex' \\
WHERE \> CompanyName='Federal Express' \\ \\
SELECT \> ProductID, ProductName \\
FROM \> Products P \\
WHERE \> EXISTS ( \\
\> SELECT \= * \\
\> FROM \> Orders O JOIN Customers C ON \\
\> \> O.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN \\
\> \> OrderDetails D ON O.OrderID = D.OrderID \\
\> WHERE \> C.Country = 'Germany' AND D.ProductID = P.ProductID )
\end{sftabbing}

\end{document}

However, in this case the quotes are transformed into curly quotes and I would need they remain straight quotes. How to achieve this ?

I know that the package upquote achieve this for the verbatim environment.

By the way, is there any way to improve the definition of my environment so that I do not need to write \\ to change lines ?

Answer 1

You can use textcomp that has a straight quote glyph and locally activate the quote character so that it produces that glyph.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{textcomp}

\newenvironment{sftabbing}
 {\par
  % locally define the active quote
  \begingroup\lccode`~=`' \lowercase{\endgroup\let~}\textquotesingle
  % locally activate the quote
  \catcode`'=\active
  \sffamily\small\tabbing}
 {\endtabbing\par}

\begin{document}

\begin{sftabbing}
INSERT \= INTO Shippers(CompanyName, Phone) \\
\> VALUES ('Federal Express', '02 752 75 75') \\ \\
UPDATE \= Shippers \\
SET \> CompanyName='Fedex' \\
WHERE \> CompanyName='Federal Express' \\ \\
SELECT \> ProductID, ProductName \\
FROM \> Products P \\
WHERE \> EXISTS ( \\
\> SELECT \= * \\
\> FROM \> Orders O JOIN Customers C ON \\
\> \> O.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN \\
\> \> OrderDetails D ON O.OrderID = D.OrderID \\
\> WHERE \> C.Country = 'Germany' AND D.ProductID = P.ProductID )
\end{sftabbing}

\end{document}

For double quotes the best is to do

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

so that " will do by itself. However, if you have reasons not to do it, here's a workaround:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1,OT1]{fontenc} % keep OT1 as default
\usepackage{textcomp}

\newenvironment{sftabbing}
 {\par
  % locally define the active quote
  \begingroup\lccode`~=`' \lowercase{\endgroup\let~}\textquotesingle
  \begingroup\lccode`~=`" \lowercase{\endgroup\def~}{{\fontencoding{T1}\selectfont\textquotedbl}}
  % locally activate the quote
  \catcode`'=\active \catcode`"=\active
  \sffamily\small\tabbing}
 {\endtabbing\par}

\begin{document}

Quotes: "

\begin{sftabbing}
INSERT \= INTO Shippers(CompanyName, Phone) \\
\> VALUES ('Federal Express', "02 752 75 75") \\ \\
UPDATE \= Shippers \\
SET \> CompanyName='Fedex' \\
WHERE \> CompanyName='Federal Express' \\ \\
SELECT \> ProductID, ProductName \\
FROM \> Products P \\
WHERE \> EXISTS ( \\
\> SELECT \= * \\
\> FROM \> Orders O JOIN Customers C ON \\
\> \> O.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN \\
\> \> OrderDetails D ON O.OrderID = D.OrderID \\
\> WHERE \> C.Country = 'Germany' AND D.ProductID = P.ProductID )
\end{sftabbing}

\end{document}

Note, however, that using " for getting curly closing quotes is disputable to begin with. See Why this " (one symbol) works as one double quote as well

Answer 2

You can use the upquote package with \textquotesingle. Since it's rather cumbersome to type \textquotesingle I usually define a shorter command, such as the \upsq one in the example below:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{upquote}

\newcommand*{\upsq}[1]{\textquotesingle #1\textquotesingle}

\newenvironment{sftabbing}
  {\par\sffamily\small\tabbing}
  {\endtabbing\par}

\begin{document}

\begin{sftabbing}
INSERT \= INTO Shippers(CompanyName, Phone) \\
\> VALUES (\upsq{Federal Express}, \upsq{02 752 75 75}) \\ \\
UPDATE \= Shippers \\
SET \> CompanyName=\upsq{Fedex} \\
WHERE \> CompanyName=\upsq{Federal Express} \\ \\
SELECT \> ProductID, ProductName \\
FROM \> Products P \\
WHERE \> EXISTS ( \\
\> SELECT \= * \\
\> FROM \> Orders O JOIN Customers C ON \\
\> \> O.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN \\
\> \> OrderDetails D ON O.OrderID = D.OrderID \\
\> WHERE \> C.Country = \upsq{Germany} AND D.ProductID = P.ProductID )
\end{sftabbing}

\end{document}

This produces:

Answer 3

Reading the docs of upquote package indicates that, for the standard CM fonts, a \ttfamily\char13 already produces the desired glyph, so I just made the ' active and redefined it.

EDITED so that straight quote is only active in the sftabbing environment, and restores to normal quote thereafter.

EDITED to include cmap package which allows proper cut/paste of quote character from PDF (see Can't copy-paste from my PDF. Any idea why?)

ADDENDUM added for those for whom cmap approach does not work.

\RequirePackage{cmap}
\documentclass{article}

\newenvironment{sftabbing}
  {\par\sffamily\small\squoteon\tabbing}
  {\endtabbing\squoteoff\par}

\let\svquote'
\catcode`'=\active
\def\squoteon{\catcode`'=\active%
  \def'{\setbox0=\hbox{\ttfamily\char13}\raisebox{1pt}{\box0}}}
\def\squoteoff{\catcode`'=12\let\'\svquote}
\catcode`'=12

\begin{document}

\begin{sftabbing}
INSERT \= INTO Shippers(CompanyName, Phone) \\
\> VALUES ('Federal Express', '02 752 75 75') \\ \\
UPDATE \= Shippers \\
SET \> CompanyName='Fedex' \\
WHERE \> CompanyName='Federal Express' \\ \\
SELECT \> ProductID, ProductName \\
FROM \> Products P \\
WHERE \> EXISTS ( \\
\> SELECT \= * \\
\> FROM \> Orders O JOIN Customers C ON \\
\> \> O.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN \\
\> \> OrderDetails D ON O.OrderID = D.OrderID \\
\> WHERE \> C.Country = 'Germany' AND D.ProductID = P.ProductID )
\end{sftabbing}
Test's of quote
\end{document}

Zoom:

For comparison, the straight quote activated by the textcomp package in \sffamily looks like a rectangular block, which may be more in keeping with the sf style, but which I find unattractive:

I thus chose to retain the \ttfamily look for the quote character.

---

ADDENDUM:

For those for whom the cmap package does not provide relief for the copy/paste feature from PDFs, an alternative "glyph-to-unicode" approach is here. Both methods work for me, but the OP was having difficulty with the cmap approach.

\documentclass{article}
\newenvironment{sftabbing}
  {\par\sffamily\small\squoteon\tabbing}
  {\endtabbing\squoteoff\par}

\let\svquote'
\catcode`'=\active
\def\squoteon{\catcode`'=\active%
  \def'{\setbox0=\hbox{\ttfamily\char13}\raisebox{1pt}{\box0}}}
\def\squoteoff{\catcode`'=12\let\'\svquote}
\catcode`'=12

\pdfgentounicode=1 %
\input glyphtounicode.tex %

\begin{document}

\begin{sftabbing}
INSERT \= INTO Shippers(CompanyName, Phone) \\
\> VALUES ('Federal Express', '02 752 75 75') \\ \\
UPDATE \= Shippers \\
SET \> CompanyName='Fedex' \\
WHERE \> CompanyName='Federal Express' \\ \\
SELECT \> ProductID, ProductName \\
FROM \> Products P \\
WHERE \> EXISTS ( \\
\> SELECT \= * \\
\> FROM \> Orders O JOIN Customers C ON \\
\> \> O.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN \\
\> \> OrderDetails D ON O.OrderID = D.OrderID \\
\> WHERE \> C.Country = 'Germany' AND D.ProductID = P.ProductID )
\end{sftabbing}
Test's of quote
\end{document}