Automatically capitalize macro output if used after a period

Question

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Detect beginning of a sentence in a macro for capitalization

Is it possible to write a macro that is able to determine if it is used at the beginning of a sentence? For example, imagine

\def\location{street}
...
This \location is nice. \location has its charm.

A simple and silly one, but anyway, you get the idea. I want the second street to be "Street." How would one do this? I am using lualatex, so if only a lua-specific solution is possible, I'd be happy with it. If it is not possible then I would have to do it manually, but that would be a lot of work in my text :-(

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 21 '12 at 19:40

10

A quick test on \spacefactor works:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\location}{%
  \ifnum\spacefactor=3000
    \expandafter\MakeUppercase\fi%
  street}
\begin{document}
This \location\ is nice. \location\ has its charm.
\end{document}

The \spacefactor differs depending on the preceding punctuation: 3000 after a period.

Since I'm unfamiliar with \spacefactor, I'm not sure how robust it is.

answered Jul 21 '12 at 19:40

Werner

603,163

2

That's really nice, it fails, if \frenchspacing is set though. With nonfrenchspacing set before ifnum it seems to work with frenchspacing too. – Peter Breitfeld Jul 21 '12 at 20:04
Ha! And I was thinking that this was nearly impossible within LaTeX and required perhaps some lua magic! – Gonzalo Medina Jul 21 '12 at 20:07

Automatically capitalize macro output if used after a period

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