Space between nested quote marks?

Question

How do I get a small amount of space (thin space?) between the two quote marks of a nested set?

I would expect this to be automatically generated by PTXprint, so could there be a problem within the text itself, e.g. the wrong kind of quote mark being used?

Answer 1

I’m not entirely sure what the python does, but (assuming that the quotes as they get through to the XeTeX portion of things are recognised as quotation marks) with no spaces, etc. between them, then it will add \quotekernamount of space between them. I’m not entirely sure why, but the code currently says \quotekernamount=0pt. If it is 0pt, then the only kerning between the characters depends on the font’s in-built kerning.

Also, I can’t see any control in PTXprint’s user interface at the moment, not even on the TeXpert hacks page. Oops.
You can of course go to the advanced tab,

Ensure that there’s a tick / check on apply customised settings,
click on “Edit”, and then add a line something like:

\quotekernamount=0.3ex

(where 1ex is the height of an x in the font, you can of course use an absolute dimension, like pt or mm, etc)

The current list of quotes for which this apply are:
U+201C LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
U+201D RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

Ideally, it would also apply the same logic to low quotes, but I presume it should not apply it to mixtures of high and low quote marks.