On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Rod Lockwood <[email protected]> wrote: > I run a Pokémon fan site and have been creating some tables and reference > files recently. Because the game originates in Japan I have to use Japanese > words and names using Romaji. In order to efficiently type in the vowels > using the macron, I decided to add them to AutoCorrect > Replace. While this > works for stand-alone characters, I found it does not work within words. I > realize that it is set up that way because the AutoCorrect is intended for > correcting words, not individual characters within words. >
This behavior is intentional. An example to show you the issues that can creep in if it was not done this way: "teh" is a common typo and can be automatically replaced with "the". But if we did this within a word, then we would replace "Tehran" with "Theran" and that might provoke an international incident ;-) Of course, this could be solved with a more expressive way of indicating the replacements, e.g., something more like a regular expression. But that complexity would be difficult for most users. > This may be fine if you are creating the entire work in one language or the > other where you can enter individual words that you know are going to be > used. But if you are using random words or names from another language you > need to be flexible and correct only the single character that needs to be > entered. However, you would need to be able to do this without destroying > the normal behavior of the AutoCorrect feature. > > I think I have a solution though. The backslash is often used as an escape > character in regular expressions. So why not use it in AutoCorrect to > indicate that it should correct only a single character without following it > up with a space? In my case I could enter /-o to indicate that it should be > corrected to ō without following it with a space. So that, as I type, N/-o, > /-Osagi, and An/-oka would become Nō, Ōsagi, and Anōka respectively. (I made > up the last two words on the fly just to give examples). > > As with using regular expressions in Find/Replace, the double backslash > would be used to automatically indicate a single backslash, if it became a > problem. For me this would be a small sacrifice for the convenience of > entering custom characters on the fly. Others may not think so though, but I > thought I would bring it up anyway. > -- It is common to have character mapping at a lower level, even within the operating system. Are you running Windows? If so, you might look at AutoHotKey for more control: http://www.autohotkey.com/ Regards, -Rob > > Rod Lockwood --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
