Block quote with big quotation marks in margin

Question

I really like Herberts solution to the question Block quote with big quotation markd which looks like this:

\documentclass{article}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{backgrounds}
\makeatletter

\tikzset{%
  fancy quotes/.style={
    text width=\fq@width pt,
    align=justify,
    inner sep=1em,
    anchor=north west,
    minimum width=\linewidth,
  },
  fancy quotes width/.initial={.8\linewidth},
  fancy quotes marks/.style={
    scale=8,
    text=white,
    inner sep=0pt,
  },
  fancy quotes opening/.style={
    fancy quotes marks,
  },
  fancy quotes closing/.style={
    fancy quotes marks,
  },
  fancy quotes background/.style={
    show background rectangle,
    inner frame xsep=0pt,
    background rectangle/.style={
      fill=gray!25,
      rounded corners,
    },
  }
}

\newenvironment{fancyquotes}[1][]{%
\noindent
\tikzpicture[fancy quotes background]
\node[fancy quotes opening,anchor=north west] (fq@ul) at (0,0) {``};
\tikz@scan@one@point\pgfutil@firstofone([email protected])
\pgfmathsetmacro{\fq@width}{\linewidth - 2*\pgf@x}
\node[fancy quotes,#1] (fq@txt) at ([email protected] west) \bgroup}
{\egroup;
\node[overlay,fancy quotes closing,anchor=east] at ([email protected] east) {''};
\endtikzpicture}

\makeatother

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]

\begin{fancyquotes}
\lipsum[1]
\end{fancyquotes}

\lipsum[1]
\end{document}

Is it possible to move the quotation marks into the margin such that the quoted text has nearly the same width as \textwidth?

Answer 1

Here is an implementation of Herbert's idea using the tcolorbox:

The important part of the code below is:

\newtcolorbox{fancyquotes}{%
        enhanced jigsaw, 
        breakable,      % allow page breaks
        frame hidden,   % hide the default frame
        left=0cm,       % left margin
        right=0cm,      % right margin
        overlay={%
            \node [scale=8,
                text=black,
                inner sep=0pt,] at ([xshift=-1cm,yshift=-1cm]frame.north west){``}; 
            \node [scale=8,
                text=black,
                inner sep=0pt,] at ([xshift=1cm]frame.south east){''};  
                },
            % paragraph skips obeyed within tcolorbox
                    parbox=false,
    }

which defines a newenvironment that allows page breaks and has the quotes in the top left and bottom right of the environment. Adjust the keys as you see fit!

Here's the complete code:

% arara: pdflatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[many]{tcolorbox}

\newtcolorbox{fancyquotes}{%
    enhanced jigsaw, 
    breakable,      % allow page breaks
    frame hidden,   % hide the default frame
    left=0cm,       % left margin
    right=0cm,      % right margin
    overlay={%
        \node [scale=8,
            text=black,
            inner sep=0pt,] at ([xshift=-1cm,yshift=-1cm]frame.north west){``}; 
        \node [scale=8,
            text=black,
            inner sep=0pt,] at ([xshift=1cm]frame.south east){''};  
            },
        % paragraph skips obeyed within tcolorbox
                parbox=false,
}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]

\begin{fancyquotes}
    \lipsum[1]
\end{fancyquotes}

\lipsum[1]

\begin{fancyquotes}
    \lipsum
\end{fancyquotes}

\end{document}

If you wish the behaviour of page-broken environments to be different, then you can adjust the environment as follows, for example,

\newtcolorbox{fancyquotes}{%
    enhanced jigsaw, 
    breakable,      % allow page breaks
    frame hidden,   % hide the default frame
    left=0cm,       % left margin
    right=0cm,      % right margin
    overlay  unbroken={%
        \node [scale=8,
            text=black,
            inner sep=0pt,] at ([xshift=-1cm,yshift=-1cm]frame.north west){``}; 
        \node [scale=8,
            text=black,
            inner sep=0pt,] at ([xshift=1cm]frame.south east){''};  
    },
    % if you wish to have the look different for page-broken boxes, adjust the following
    overlay first={%
    \node [scale=8,
            text=black,
            inner sep=0pt,] at ([xshift=-1cm,yshift=-1cm]frame.north west){``}; 
    },
    overlay middle={},
    overlay last={%
        \node [scale=8,
            text=black,
            inner sep=0pt,] at ([xshift=1cm]frame.south east){''};  
    },
    % paragraph skips obeyed within tcolorbox
    parbox=false,
}

This puts quotes at the beginning and at the end, but not in the 'middle' bits, i.e, across page breaks.