Some Elisp Questions on Changing an Alist

cc-org-smart-quotes.el

;;; cc-org-smart-quotes.el --- CC Org Smart Quotes Config  -*- lexical-binding: t; -*-

;; Copyright (C) 2024  Charles Choi

;; Author: Charles Choi <kickingvegas@gmail.com>
;; Keywords: tools

;; This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
;; the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
;; (at your option) any later version.

;; This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
;; but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
;; GNU General Public License for more details.

;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
;; along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

;;; Commentary:

;;

;;; Code:
(require 'org)
(require 'ox)

(defun cc/reconfig-org-smart-quotes-lang (lang)
  "Reconfigure Org smart quotes to use utf-8 per LANG."
  (let* ((db-entry (assoc-string lang org-export-smart-quotes-alist))
         (utf8-primary-opening (plist-get (assoc-default 'primary-opening db-entry) :utf-8))
         (utf8-primary-closing (plist-get (assoc-default 'primary-closing db-entry) :utf-8))
         (utf8-secondary-opening (plist-get (assoc-default 'secondary-opening db-entry) :utf-8))
         (utf8-secondary-closing (plist-get (assoc-default 'secondary-closing db-entry) :utf-8))
         (utf8-apostrophe (plist-get (assoc-default 'apostrophe db-entry) :utf-8))
         )

    (setf (plist-get
           (assoc-default 'primary-opening
                          (assoc-string lang org-export-smart-quotes-alist))
           :html)
          utf8-primary-opening)

    (setf (plist-get
           (assoc-default 'primary-closing
                          (assoc-string lang org-export-smart-quotes-alist))
           :html)
          utf8-primary-closing)

    (setf (plist-get
           (assoc-default 'secondary-opening
                          (assoc-string lang org-export-smart-quotes-alist))
           :html)
          utf8-secondary-opening)

    (setf (plist-get
           (assoc-default 'secondary-closing
                          (assoc-string lang org-export-smart-quotes-alist))
           :html)
          utf8-secondary-closing)

    (setf (plist-get
           (assoc-default 'apostrophe
                          (assoc-string lang org-export-smart-quotes-alist))
           :html)
          utf8-apostrophe)))


(provide 'cc-org-smart-quotes)
;;; cc-org-smart-quotes.el ends here

Byte compiling this file gives this warning.

⛔ Warning (comp): cc-org-smart-quotes.el: Warning: the function ‘(setf assoc-default)’ is not known to be defined.

How do I fix this?

Is setf the right function to mutate an existing alist? Looking at the alist org-export-smart-quotes-alist, it seems that setf inserts a reference as a value to the key :html to the value for the key :utf-8:

 ("en"
  (primary-opening :utf-8 #1="“" :html #1# :latex "``" :texinfo "``")
  (primary-closing :utf-8 #2="”" :html #2# :latex "''" :texinfo "''")
  (secondary-opening :utf-8 #3="‘" :html #3# :latex "`" :texinfo "`")
  (secondary-closing :utf-8 #4="’" :html #4# :latex "'" :texinfo "'")
  (apostrophe :utf-8 #5="’" :html #5#))

Is there a way to just set a value and not a reference?

Is there a simpler way to access these alist values? Seems like I'm working too hard to travel the key path of "en" -> 'primary-opening -> :utf-8.

;; Use UTF-8 smart quotes instead of HTML entities in HTML and Markdown export. This was originally inspired by the post at
;; http://yummymelon.com/devnull/exporting-utf-8-smart-quotes-from-org-mode.html, but the author issued a challenge at the
;; end to do it cleaner. I vaguely remembered function advice from reading the elisp manual, and it turned out that this was
;; an effective approach!
(defun dcb/make-utf8-encoding-org-export (args)
  "Override the ARGS for smartquotes to make :html encoded entities use utf-8 instead."
  (if (eq (nth 1 args) :html) ;; if the encoding is html (which both md and gfm derive from)
      (progn (setcar (nthcdr 1 args) :utf-8) ;; ...replace the encoding arg with :utf-8 to force utf-8 characters
             args)
    args))

(setq org-export-with-smart-quotes t) ;; Can be overridden with ':nil in the OPTIONS
(advice-add 'org-export-activate-smart-quotes :filter-args 'dcb/make-utf8-encoding-org-export)

@dchenbecker Nice! That said, not sure if using advice is the "cleanest" thing as it monkey-patches behavior that could change in the future.

That's fair. The cleanest thing would be to submit a PR to Org making this configurable, I suppose :)