On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:03:00 -0400
Kenn Goutal [EMAIL PROTECTED] dijo:
I think it would be really helpful
if there were a Lettercase ... item
on the right-click menu for selected text.
Is anyone else thinking along these lines?
Is anyone contemplating adding such a feature?
*Would* anyone undertake to add such a feature?
As others have pointed out, there are more options in Format
Character Font Effects. You can add these to your toolbar if you wish.
However, there is one lettercase item that is not available, that is,
you cannot do Title Case for English. Title Case in OpenOffice
capitalizes the first letter of every word in the selection, where
English style manuals expect certain words not to be capitalized in the
titles of books and other works. I started to write a macro to do this,
but then realized I couldn't do the whole thing just with Record Macro
- I needed to know how to write macros manually. I don't have time to
learn how to do that, so I gave up the job.
If someone would like to create the macro I can help with the design.
For example, the macro must start by converting the selected text to
lowercase, then to title case. Then it must search for the specific
words that should not be capitalized and convert them back to
lowercase. The last part is where the macro needs someone with macro
writing skills. The problem is that there are numerous style manuals in
use in the English-speaking world, and each one defines the words that
should not be capitalized somewhat differently. Therefore, the macro
must use a word list that the user can edit, that is, a word list in a
separate file. All I know how to do is record a macro, and you can't
make a macro access a word list with just the Record Macro function.
I can also help with the word list. For example, all the style manuals
say not to capitalize the articles (a, an, and the). They also say not
to capitalize coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so,
yet). Some style books used to advocate capitalizing longer
prepositions, but both the Modern Language Association Manual of Style
and the Chicago Manual of Style prefer that all prepositions be
lowercased, including longer ones such as between, among, and
throughout. But what if the user must use a style manual that says to
capitalize the longer prepositions? That is why there must be a
separate file for the word list - the user can just delete the longer
prepositions from the list of words not to capitalize. I am a student
of linguistics and have available to me a list of all English
prepositions, which is a list of only a few hundred words. Thus, the
word list would not be unreasonably large.
At the end the macro must capitalize the first word (even if it is a
word that otherwise would be all lowercase), and as far as I know, all
the style manuals require that the last word also be capitalized, even
if it is an article, coordinating conjunction, or preposition.
I would find such a macro very handy. I could easily be posted on the
OOo website so that everyone could use it.
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