What is the best way to produce a tilde in LaTeX for a website?

Question

Following the previous questions on this topic, when you produce a website in LaTeX what is the best way to produce a url that contains a tilde? \verb produces the upper tilde that does not read well, and $\sim$ does not copy/pase well (adding a space when I do it). Solutions?

It seems like this should be one of those things that has a very easy fix... if it doesn't, why not?

Answer 1

I'd look at the url package.

Answer 2

I know this is an old question, but I recently came up with something that, despite a severe lack of elegance, works beautifully.

\catcode`~=11 % make LaTeX treat tilde (~) like a normal character
\newcommand{\urltilde}{\kern -.15em\lower .7ex\hbox{~}\kern .04em}
\catcode`~=13 % revert back to treating tilde (~) as an active character

Now you can use \urltilde inside of a \url tag (even in a .bib file) and: 1) the URL will render perfectly; 2) clicking on the URL will take you to the correct address; and, 3) copy-paste will put the correct address in the clipboard.

This is the only solution I have found that satisfies all three of these requirements. I hope it helps somebody out there.