capitalization
Is there a way to tell LaTeX to automatically capitalize the first letters of words in chapters and sections?
I imagine something that checks a dictionary for words like for, of, the, in … and leaves them small (if it's not the first word).
I couldn't find anything on the internet but I think it would be useful, especially for switching between one of the many conventions of capitalization of titles in English to another one.
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{xparse}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\NewDocumentCommand{\capitalize}{>{\SplitList{~}}m}{
\CapitalizeFirst#1\Capitalize\unskip
}
\ExplSyntaxOff
\def\Sentinel{\Capitalize}
\def\CapitalizeFirst#1{\MakeUppercase#1 \Capitalize}
\def\Capitalize#1{%
\def\next{#1}%
\ifx\next\Sentinel
\expandafter\unskip
\else
\CheckInList{#1}\space\expandafter\Capitalize
\fi}
\def\CheckInList#1{%
\ifcsname List@\detokenize{#1}\endcsname
#1%
\else
\MakeUppercase#1%
\fi}
\makeatletter
\def\AppendToList#1{%
\@for\next:=#1\do
{\expandafter\let\csname List@\detokenize\expandafter{\next}\endcsname\empty}}
\makeatother
\AppendToList{a,is,of}
\begin{document}
\capitalize{here is a list of words école}
\end{document}
Won't work with UTF-8 (unless XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX are used).
It won't work with UTF-8 in pdflatex because \MakeUppercase will apply only to the first byte of a possible two, three or four byte combination (for Western languages probably only two). For that to work one has to feed the whole block of bytes to \MakeUppercase.
To be clearer: when we say \MakeUppercase, LaTeX will uppercase the argument; in general the call is \MakeUppercase{word}; here we're saying instead \MakeUppercase#1 (without braces), so only the first token (usually a character) will be uppercased; here's where it will fail with input such as \'ecole: the token passed to \MakeUppercase would be \', which it doesn't know what to do. Using école (and a one byte encoding such as latin1), \MakeUppercase will process é and give the correct result.
With UTF-8 this would fail: what we see as é on our screen when writing a LaTeX document is actually two bytes (C3 and A9, for é) and again \MakeUppercase would be passed only the first one. So a more complex routine is necessary.
In order to have this work with pdflatex and UTF-8, the definition of \CheckInList and \CapitalizeFirst above can be changed into the following
\def\CapitalizeFirst#1{\expandafter\UC@next#1 \Capitalize}
\def\CheckInList#1{%
\ifcsname List@\detokenize{#1}\endcsname
#1%
\else
\expandafter\UC@next#1%
\fi}
\def\UC@next#1{%
\ifx#1\UTFviii@two@octets
\expandafter\@firstoffour
\else
\ifx#1\UTFviii@three@octets
\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter\@secondoffour
\else
\ifx#1\UTFviii@four@octets
\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter
\@thirdoffour
\else
\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter
\expandafter\expandafter\@fourthoffour
\fi
\fi
\fi
{\UC@two}{\UC@three}{\UC@four}{\MakeUppercase}#1}
\def\UC@two#1#2#3{\MakeUppercase{#1#2#3}}
\def\UC@three#1#2#3#4{\MakeUppercase{#1#2#3#4}}
\def\UC@four#1#2#3#4#5{\MakeUppercase{#1#2#3#4#5}}
\providecommand\@firstoffour[4]{#1}
\providecommand\@secondoffour[4]{#2}
\providecommand\@thirdoffour[4]{#3}
\providecommand\@fourthoffour[4]{#4}
However accent commands are not allowed (they aren't also in the other version).
After a few years, here's a better implementation, thanks to new expl3 features; it works for all engines.
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{ifxetex}
\ifxetex
\usepackage{fontspec}
\else
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\fi
\usepackage{xparse}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\NewDocumentCommand{\capitalize}{>{\SplitList{~}}m}
{
\seq_clear:N \l_capitalize_words_seq
\ProcessList{#1}{\CapitalizeFirst}
\seq_use:Nn \l_capitalize_words_seq { ~ }
}
\NewDocumentCommand{\CapitalizeFirst}{m}
{
\capitalize_word:n { #1 }
}
\sys_if_engine_pdftex:TF
{
\cs_set_eq:Nc \capitalize_tl_set:Nn { protected@edef }
}
{
\cs_set_eq:NN \capitalize_tl_set:Nn \tl_set:Nn
}
\cs_new_protected:Nn \capitalize_word:n
{
\capitalize_tl_set:Nn \l_capitalize_word_tl { #1 }
\seq_if_in:NfTF \g_capitalize_exceptions_seq { \tl_to_str:n { #1 } }
% exception word
{ \seq_put_right:Nn \l_capitalize_words_seq { #1 } } % exception word
% to be uppercased
{ \seq_put_right:Nx \l_capitalize_words_seq { \tl_mixed_case:V \l_capitalize_word_tl } }
}
\cs_generate_variant:Nn \tl_mixed_case:n { V }
\NewDocumentCommand{\AppendToList}{m}
{
\clist_map_inline:nn { #1 }
{
\seq_gput_right:Nx \g_capitalize_exceptions_seq { \tl_to_str:n { ##1 } }
}
}
\cs_generate_variant:Nn \seq_if_in:NnTF { Nf }
\seq_new:N \l_capitalize_words_seq
\seq_new:N \g_capitalize_exceptions_seq
\ExplSyntaxOff
\AppendToList{a,is,of,óf}
\begin{document}
X\capitalize{here is a list of words óf école}X
\end{document}
Perhaps
\newcommand{\indexthis}[1]{\textcolor{Maroon}{\textbf{#1}}\lowercase{\index{#1}}}
(deleted xspace as it is not needed here as the macro call ends with } so does not drop spaces)
Best Answer
Hows this:
This is something that I wrote these past two days. It seems to do the job. I sure that it will fail if you start hyphenating words, using quotation marks, etc. I'm am sure it can be cleaned up further, but I leave that for someone else.