Re: How to get rid of Microsoft dumb quotes, e.g. \222 for apostrophe?

[ken <gebser@speakeasy.net>]

On 02/16/2007 07:44 AM somebody named Brendan Halpin wrote:
> "Endless Story" <usable.thought@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> I have just started seeing lots of nasty stuff like \222 instead of
>> apostrophes in working on text files in Emacs on XP, then trying to
>> reformat these files for LaTeX. 
> 
> Something like this might work: 
> 
>   (while (re-search-forward "[€-Ÿ]" nil t)
>     (let ((mschar (buffer-substring-no-properties 
>                    (match-beginning 0) (match-end 0))))
>       (cond 
>        ((string= mschar "‘") (replace-match "`" )) 
>        ((string= mschar "’") (replace-match "'" )) 
>        ((string= mschar "“") (replace-match "``")) 
>        ((string= mschar "”") (replace-match "''")) 
>        ((string= mschar "–") (replace-match "--")))))
> 
> Obviously, the list of matches can be extended.
> 
> Brendan

Thanks much for this.  To make better use, I added a bit of code to the
above:

(defun replace-garbage-chars ()
"Replace goofy MS and other garbage characters with latin1 equivalents."
(interactive)
(save-excursion				;save the current point
  (goto-char (point-min))		;go to begin of buffer
	     (while (re-search-forward "[€-Ÿ]" nil t)
	       (let ((mschar (buffer-substring-no-properties
			      (match-beginning 0) (match-end 0))))
		 (cond
		  ((string= mschar "‘") (replace-match "`" ))
		  ((string= mschar "Â’") (replace-match "'" ))
		  ((string= mschar "“") (replace-match "``"))
		  ((string= mschar "”") (replace-match "''"))
		  ((string= mschar "—") (replace-match "--'"))
		  ((string= mschar "–") (replace-match "--")))))))

This allows, or should allow, the binding of the function to a key
chord.  But something is not right.  Can anyone tell where the problem
is.  Running this function I get no errors, but the garbage/mschars are
not replaced.


tia,
ken