Can SmarterProper be improved?

[sandyinlet]

I'm currently using SmarterProper by David Tremmel. Excellent for curbing ALL CAPS data entry.

However, there's one place it goes too far — instances where something like NATO or CIA turns up within the text of the field. Reverting to Nato and Cia doesn't really cut it.

I can think of two possible ways to a solution. 1. Let SmarterProper do its thing, but only once. Allow the user to re-edit the text after initial entry. Possible?

2. Revise SmarterProper to maintain all caps if the word is two to four characters long. That would also require some re-editing after the fact. Not nearly as satisfactory.

Any thoughts? Much appreciated.

[Vaughan]

There is another option:

3) create a list of exceptions that remain capitalised, this will need to be exhaustive and may in some cases be contradictory eg, CAN might be an abbreviation for Canadian Automobile Association, this will prevent the "can" in "TIN CAN" from being corrected.

Expect that there will always be some clean-up work with any automated process. It's when the cleanup work exceeds the time to re-do the job completely that the process is no longer economical to perform.

[sandyinlet]

There is another option:

3) create a list of exceptions that remain capitalised, this will need to be exhaustive and may in some cases be contradictory eg, CAN might be an abbreviation for Canadian Automobile Association, this will prevent the "can" in "TIN CAN" from being corrected.

For the sake of argument, could a field be provided to the user to enter their own abbreviation set and have the Custom Function automatically integrate it?

Appreciated.

[Vaughan]

Quite possibly. But it would be a lot of work re-building the custom function.

The easiest to implement would be your option 1: create a script that process the text with the custom function, and let the user decide when to run the script. It could be a button on the layout or a command in a menu (or both).

[Christine Sephton]

Why not edit the custom function to check for a word that starts and ends with a character(like ~) and then whatever is in between the characters will remain untouched?

Christine

Example: ~CIA~ will chang to CIA

Edited November 7, 2010 by Guest