Operation request: Escape Smart Characters

[n1474335]

Summary

An operation to convert smart characters (quotes, dashes, apostrophes, arrows, copyright signs, ellipses etc.) back to plain ASCII.

Example

Input

“”—‘’ →©…

Output

""--''-->(c)...

References

http://unicode.scarfboy.com/?s=quotation+mark
http://quotesandaccents.com/

[ghost]

What should happen if the input contains a character with no obvious text equivalent, eg ☣?
http://unicode.scarfboy.com/?s=U%2b2623

Should it be:

• Removed from the output
• Included in the output
• Escaped to HTML/Unicode entity
• Something else

[n1474335]

It would probably make sense for this to be an option that the user can specify. The following options should be available:

• Remove
• Include
• Replace with a '.'

If someone wants to escape them as HTML or Unicode entities, there are other operations that can achieve that.