mrkkrp/fix-word

Transform words in Emacs (upcase, downcase, capitalize, etc.)

Fix Word

This is a package that allows us to transform words intelligently. It provides the function fix-word that lifts functions that do string transformation into commands with interesting behavior. There are also some built-in commands built on top of fix-word.

Installation

The package is available via MELPA, so you can just type M-x package-install RET fix-word RET.

If you would like to install the package manually, download or clone it and put on Emacs' load-path. Then you can require it in your init file like this:

(require 'fix-word)

API description

fix-word fnc

Lift the function fnc into a command that operates on words and regions.

The following behaviors are implemented:

1. If the point is placed outside of a word, apply fnc to the previous word. When the command is invoked repeatedly, every its invocation transforms one more word moving from right to left. For example (upcasing, ^ shows the position of the point):

   The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.^
   The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy DOG.^
   The quick brown fox jumps over the LAZY DOG.^
   The quick brown fox jumps over THE LAZY DOG.^
   

   The point doesn't move, this allows us to fix recently entered words and continue typing.

2. If the point is placed inside of a word, the entire word is transformed. The point is moved to the first character of the next word. This allows us to transform several words by invoking the command repeatedly.

   ^The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
   THE ^quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
   THE QUICK ^brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
   THE QUICK BROWN ^fox jumps over the lazy dog.
   

3. If there is an active region, all words in that region are transformed.

Use fix-word to create new commands like this:

(defalias 'command-name (fix-word #'upcase)
  "Description of the command.")

There is also a macro that defines such commands for you: fix-word-define-command.

---

fix-word-define-command name fnc &optional doc

Define a fix-word-based command named name. fnc is the processing function and doc is the documentation string.

Built-in commands

The default commands to upcase/downcase/capitalize words are not convenient, for the following reasons:

1. There are three different commands for upcaseing, for example. The user needs to remember the three commands, their key bindings, and when to use each of them. There should be one command per action: one for upcasing, one for downcasing, and one for capitalizing.

2. The commands on regions don't have dedicated key bindings and are disabled by default.

3. The commands like upcase-word depend on the position of pointer inside of the word, so that the result of upcasing "fo^o"is "foO". This packages assumes that you want "FOO".

4. One needs to use arguments for commands like upcase-word to make them correct the words that one has just written and only one word can be adjusted in this way.

Here are the commands that try to fix these flaws:

• fix-word-upcase
• fix-word-downcase
• fix-word-capitalize

I propose replacing of the built-ins with these new commands:

(global-set-key (kbd "M-u") #'fix-word-upcase)
(global-set-key (kbd "M-l") #'fix-word-downcase)
(global-set-key (kbd "M-c") #'fix-word-capitalize)

License

Copyright © 2015–present Mark Karpov

Distributed under GNU GPL, version 3.

fix-word's Issues

How to correctly capitalize small words (a, an, the...) in the tittle.

According to this web site

All large words in the titles of movies, books, and other publications should be capitalized, while all small words (a, an, the, but, and, if, as, or, nor, to name a few) should not be capitalized unless they are the first or last words in the title:
A Life Less Ordinary (The word "A" would not normally be capitalized, but because it is the first word in the title, we must capitalize it.)
OR
War of the Worlds (The words "of" and "the" are not capitalized because they are small and are not at the beginning or end of the title, though exceptions to the "small words" rule do exist.)

So, how should we handle those scenarios when we capitalize words.

Bug when working backwards in multiple-cursors

This is a brilliant interface! Thanks for the great package.

It even works with multiple-cursors… except when extending backward. Not a deal-breaker as one can move the cursors to do it if need be, but thought I should record this bug.

Here's a demo of what happens with three lines, and three cursors at the start of 'over'.

The quick brown fox jumps ^over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps ^over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps ^over the lazy dog.

Then type this sequence:
M-u M-u M-u C-b

The quick brown fox jumps OVER THE LAZY^ dog.
The quick brown fox jumps OVER THE LAZY^ dog.
The quick brown fox jumps OVER THE LAZY^ dog.

M-l

The quick brown fox jumps OVER THE lazy^ dog.
The quick brown fox jumps OVER THE lazy^ dog.
The quick brown fox jumps OVER THE lazy^ dog.

M-l

The quick brown fox jumps OVER the lazy^ dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over THE lazy^ dog.
The quick brown fox jumps OVER THE lazy^ dog.

It looks to be caused by the use of fix-word--quick-fix-times as a global variable. Perhaps there would be a way to increment that count only once, or divide by the number of active cursors, or look into how smartparens handles sp--mc/cursor-specific-vars… haven't dug into this too much, as I said any case switching can be performed in other ways right now.