NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/bit/listserv/notabene/587

Text File | 1992-08-19 | 1.8 KB | 43 lines

Newsgroups: bit.listserv.notabene
Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!skule.ecf!epas!binkley
From: [e-mail] (P. Binkley)
Subject: Re: Avoiding unwanted capitalisation of i
Organization: University of Toronto - EPAS
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 13:21:07 GMT
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <23416.9208191009@amory>
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Nntp-Posting-Host: epas.utoronto.ca
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In article <23416.9208191009@amory> [e-mail] writes:
...
>Is there a way of putting a line into my .SPL such that the letter i
>will be uppercased to I but only where it is the first person singular
>pronoun? The reason is that I also have a line "ie i.e.," (plus
>italics, not shown here). When I run the speller, it turns into I.e.
>because the "i" is also surrounded by separators and is not
>distinguished from " i "

Mervyn

Here's a kludge that might work.  Pick a character you never use, say
the sigma in the extended ascii set.  Put this line in your .SPL:
"ie i[sigma].e.,", and set your printer file so the sigma doesn't
print.  The "i" is no longer surrounded by separators and should be
immune to the speller.  Of course, it looks funny on screen, and will
have to be fixed before you export the file to any system but your
own, but at least it works.  I think.  Better yet, make it
"ie i[sigma]e.," and fix the printer file so sigma prints as a period.
You could write a little xpl program to replace sigmas (sigmata?) with
periods, once you've finished spell-checking.

Perhaps there's a better character than sigma.  The conditional hyphen
would work - it's not a separator, is it?  It wouldn't print, and it
would automatically be suppressed when you export; but it would
sometimes trigger hyphenation.  Any other ideas out there?

Peter Binkley
[e-mail]