TextCommands issue with possessive words

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
,
#1 

set theString to "the moriarty's"

tell application "TextCommands"
set theString to titlecase theString
end
return theString

returns – “The Moriarty’S”

Clearly, I don’t want the " 's " capitalized. Does anyone know a way around this issue?

#2

I see reference to Satimage being able to handle this. But, the dictionary does not appear to support titlecase, only upper and lower.

Any help would be appreciated.

#3

Try this


set theString to "the moriarty's"
do shell script "/bin/echo " & quoted form of theString & " | /usr/bin/awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)sub(/./,toupper(substr($i,1,1)),$i)}1'"
#4

That seems to be perfect.

Thanks!

Of course, the tail end of that shell script means nothing to me, unfortunately. I guess I have some more reading to do…

#5

Reviving an old thread here.

Anyone know how I could revise this to also account for “Mc” names & hyphenated terms?

So “McDonald’s” would not return “Mcdonald’s.” And, “Smith-Nelson” wouldn’t return “Smith-nelson.”

#6

I’m a lazy bastard,
So I’d set Mc as text item delimiters after the first processing of a name, if I then got two items, I’d pass the first one through again. Recrate the new text with the text item delimiter, then I’d set the text item delimiter to “-”, and pass it through again, and revive it once again.

Then, if the name was mcgregor-olson originally, then it would turn out as McGregor-Olson.

It is a bite expensive, but I think Satimage.Osax has title case nowadays.

Here is a piece I made for you, using sed, but only when it has to, that you can rework to suit your needs.

This will only work well on Snow Leopard and newer.


set a to {"O'reilly", "mcgregor", "smith-tønnesen"}
repeat with aname in a
	local workMaterial, toUp, uppered
	set workMaterial to contents of aname as text
	set toUp to text 1 of workMaterial # grabs the character to uppercase.
	set uppered to titleCase for toUp
	set workMaterial to uppered & text 2 thru -1 of workMaterial
	# The initial first letter should now be uppercase.
	repeat with aDelim in {"O'", "Mc", "-"}
		local tids, namPieces
		set {tids, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {AppleScript's text item delimiters, contents of aDelim}
		
		set namPieces to text items of workMaterial
		if (length of namPieces) > 1 then # One of the delimiters present.
			set toUp to text 1 of item 2 of namPieces # uppercase the piece.
			set uppered to titleCase for toUp
			set text item 2 of namPieces to uppered & text 2 thru -1 of text item 2 of namPieces
			set workMaterial to namPieces as text # put the fixed name back.
			set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tids
		end if
	end repeat
	set contents of aname to workMaterial # set the fixed name back into the list.
end repeat
log a
to titleCase for aCh
	local titleChar
	set titleChar to (do shell script "sed -e ' y/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzæøå/ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÆØÅ/' <<<" & aCh)
	return titleChar
end titleCase