A fine piece of work! I hope it becomes *the* reference work for updating
LyX in this area.
Best regards
--
Larry S. Marso
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Sat, Jan 30, 1999 at 10:24:17PM -0500, John Weiss wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 30, 1999 at 12:18:36AM -0500, Larry S. Marso wrote:
> > I received an answer to my question (thank you!) about the right latex for
> > an period *not* at the end of a sentance.
> >
> > I don't understand why we have "end of sentance period" built into the
> > Insert -> Special Character menu. We get that by typing "." don't we?
> > Shouldn't the special character instead be "not end of sentance period"
> > (described more eloquently than this, of course) -- which would correspond
> > to a ".\ " in raw LaTeX? Any document with lots of "Mr." notations, names
> > including "Inc." (sorry, we don't use Aktiengesselchaft here) needs this
> > function. Hard spaces mess up line breaks badly.
>
> Yes, we do need the "abbreviation period" IMO. However, your question
> points out that we also need the "end of sentence period" --- can you
> name the esoteric LaTeX code that forces inter-sentence space after a
> period? Didn't think so. Again, for some odd reason, no one wanted
> to add one of these.
>
> Now that I write C++ for a living, I'll take a gander at adding this
> to 1.0.1/1.1 at some point.
>
> What follows is only a suggestion, so take it with a grain of NaCl.
>
> After I finally grasped when LaTeX uses what sort of spacing after a
> ".", the algorithm struck me as odd. After all, it's not hard to look
> at the next non-whitespace character after a "." and see if it's
> uppercase. If so, that "." ends a sentence. If not, it's an
> abbreviation. That kind of algorithm would be fairly easy to add to
> the LyX LaTeX export. On re-importing, we'd have to put in the
> distinction between abbreviation and sentence-ending periods that we
> wrote to the LaTeX file. Yes, the resulting LyX doc would look like
> an xmas tree with all of the multicolored dots, but that's the price
> of import.
>
> There are several ways we can implement "intelligent dots". Here are
> some of my ideas:
>
> Algorithm #0: Existing LaTeX
> Not a suggestion per-se, but a statement of what we get right now.
>
> Inter-Word Spacing:
> "." follows any uppercase *letter*
>
> Inter-Sentence Spacing:
> Anywhere else
>
> Customization Needed:
> [x] Latinate Abbreviations: "e. g. ", "i. e. "
> [x] Title Abbreviations: "Mr. Jones", "Dr. Smith", "Mrs. Peale"
> [x] Name Descriptors: "Richard Hawkins, Esq. knows [...]"
> [x] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Word:
> "[...] on Fiji. If you are [...]"
> [x] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Letter:
> "[...] at NASA. Experts say [...]"
>
> ====================================================================
> The remainder are things LyX would forcibly do "i. e. add the "@"
> or "\ " upon LaTeX output. Each of the suggestions is
> semi-orthogonal; I'm not considering combinations just yet.
> ====================================================================
>
> Algorithm #1:
> Inter-Word Spacing:
> Anyplace except...
> Inter-Sentence Spacing:
> "." followed by any whitespace followed by an uppercase
> letter.
>
> Customization Needed:
> [ ] Latinate Abbreviations: "e. g. ", "i. e. "
> [x] Title Abbreviations: "Mr. Jones", "Dr. Smith", "Mrs. Peale"
> [ ] Name Descriptors: "Richard Hawkins, Esq. knows [...]"
> [ ] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Word:
> "[...] on Fiji. If you are [...]"
> [ ] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Letter:
> "[...] at NASA. Experts say [...]"
>
>
> Algorithm #2:
> Inter-Word Spacing:
> "." follows a capitalized *word*
> Inter-Sentence Spacing:
> Anywhere else
>
> Customization Needed:
> [x] Latinate Abbreviations: "e. g. ", "i. e. "
> [ ] Title Abbreviations: "Mr. Jones", "Dr. Smith", "Mrs. Peale"
> [ ] Name Descriptors: "Richard Hawkins, Esq. knows [...]"
> [x] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Word:
> "[...] on Fiji. If you are [...]"
> [x] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Letter:
> "[...] at NASA. Experts say [...]"
>
>
> Algorithm #3:
> Inter-Word Spacing:
> Anyplace except...
> Inter-Sentence Spacing:
> "." follows a lowercase word
>
> Customization Needed: Same as #3
>
>
> Algorithm #4:
> Inter-Word Spacing:
> "." follows a "word" that is only 1 character long.
> Inter-Sentence Spacing:
> Anywhere else
>
> Customization Needed:
> [ ] Latinate Abbreviations: "e. g. ", "i. e. "
> [x] Title Abbreviations: "Mr. Jones", "Dr. Smith", "Mrs. Peale"
> [x] Name Descriptors: "Richard Hawkins, Esq. knows [...]"
> [ ] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Word:
> "[...] on Fiji. If you are [...]"
> [ ] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Letter:
> "[...] at NASA. Experts say [...]"
>
>
> Algorithm #5:
> Inter-Word Spacing:
> "." follows any word that is shorter than 4 characters.
> Inter-Sentence Spacing:
> Anywhere else
>
> Customization Needed:
> [ ] Latinate Abbreviations: "e. g. ", "i. e. "
> [ ] Title Abbreviations: "Mr. Jones", "Dr. Smith", "Mrs. Peale"
> [ ] Name Descriptors: "Richard Hawkins, Esq. knows [...]"
> [ ] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Word:
> "[...] on Fiji. If you are [...]"
> [ ] Sentence Ending in a Capitalized Letter:
> "[...] at NASA. Experts say [...]"
> [x] Sentence Ending in a Short Word:
> "[...] the place we went to. I thought [...]"
>
>
> #1 is probably the easiest to implement, and would also execute the
> fastest. Its downside is that it forces customization for the most
> common form of abbreviation: titles on names. #4 has the same
> drawback. #5 has a different fatal flaw: it will fail on some pretty
> common sentences. #2 doesn't fail on name titles, but fails on many
> other cases. We'd want this "magic period" to work properly with the
> sorts of abbreviations and sentences that people use most often. None
> of the ideas I've had fit that description perfectly. So, it boils
> down to where do we want to force the user to add a special period?
>
> Thoughts? Comments?
>
> --
> John Weiss
>
