Re: Capitalize special cases
This WebDNA talk-list message is from 2000
It keeps the original formatting.
numero = 32729
interpreted = N
texte = Grant -I definitely feel for you. It is non-trivial to perform consistent capitalization in English, not to mention other languagues. I hadn't considered that you were just flipping the case after non-alphabetic characters. Let me think about whether there is a better way to deal with it using [grep]. I know that trying to expand the rules to include names will be very difficult, but we may be able to get to a better rule for everything else...John PeacockGrant Hulbert wrote: > > >The desire to correctly capitalize names with apostrophes should not > >override the desire to correctly manage the possessive form. If the > >parser performed a lookahead and only capitalized after a apostrophe > >when the second character after is a letter, not whitespace. > > We're actually capitalizing after every non-character (to handle > periods as sentence beginnings and such), so it's just an accident > that the apostrophe works as it does. Is your proposed rule the only > one necessary? I could imagine putting that rule in, as long as we > don't start bogging down with lots of other special cases. Is there > a [grep] replacement string that could be used instead? > > This is an example of one of those features that we didn't want to > include in the first place, but the customer begged and begged and > said they didn't mind if it wasn't perfect, and now we're stuck with > it. I can imagine an endless stream of special cases for something > so willy-nilly as English grammar, which does not 'code well'. > Someday someone on the main talk list will latch onto this with the > old I asked for this 7.4 months ago, and no one at SM has fixed it > yet, and then we'll be stuck in this endless silly battle in which > we're always the bad guys. You can imagine how the fall of > civilization itself will someday be blamed on this. > > Grant Hulbert, Director of Engineering ********************************** > Smith Micro, Internet Solutions Div | eCommerce (WebCatalog) > 16855 West Bernardo Drive, #380 | ------------------------- > San Diego, CA 92127 | Software & Site Development > Main Line: (858) 675-1106 | http://www.smithmicro.com > Fax: (858) 675-0372 **********************************############################################################# This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list
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Associated Messages, from the most recent to the oldest:
Grant -I definitely feel for you. It is non-trivial to perform consistent capitalization in English, not to mention other languagues. I hadn't considered that you were just flipping the case after non-alphabetic characters. Let me think about whether there is a better way to deal with it using [grep]. I know that trying to expand the rules to include names will be very difficult, but we may be able to get to a better rule for everything else...John PeacockGrant Hulbert wrote: > > >The desire to correctly capitalize names with apostrophes should not > >override the desire to correctly manage the possessive form. If the > >parser performed a lookahead and only capitalized after a apostrophe > >when the second character after is a letter, not whitespace. > > We're actually capitalizing after every non-character (to handle > periods as sentence beginnings and such), so it's just an accident > that the apostrophe works as it does. Is your proposed rule the only > one necessary? I could imagine putting that rule in, as long as we > don't start bogging down with lots of other special cases. Is there > a [grep] replacement string that could be used instead? > > This is an example of one of those features that we didn't want to > include in the first place, but the customer begged and begged and > said they didn't mind if it wasn't perfect, and now we're stuck with > it. I can imagine an endless stream of special cases for something > so willy-nilly as English grammar, which does not 'code well'. > Someday someone on the main Talk List will latch onto this with the > old I asked for this 7.4 months ago, and no one at SM has fixed it > yet, and then we'll be stuck in this endless silly battle in which > we're always the bad guys. You can imagine how the fall of > civilization itself will someday be blamed on this. > > Grant Hulbert, Director of Engineering ********************************** > Smith Micro, Internet Solutions Div | eCommerce (WebCatalog) > 16855 West Bernardo Drive, #380 | ------------------------- > San Diego, CA 92127 | Software & Site Development > Main Line: (858) 675-1106 | http://www.smithmicro.com > Fax: (858) 675-0372 **********************************############################################################# This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list . To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to To switch to the INDEX mode, E-mail to Send administrative queries to
John Peacock
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