to be able to redefine punctuation marks

[casperdewith]

request

I’d like to be able to define new bracket shorthands for punctuation. These are preferably system-specific, so they are defined in the Python file for the system, instead of being hard-coded in Plover.

This flexibility can keep dictionaries clean.

examples

Punctuation-mark definitions can vary across languages, or even dialects. For instance, in France French, a no-break space precedes a question mark, whereas in Québec French, the question mark is attached to the previous word.

If punctuation symbols would be definable per system, a user would be able to define {?} as {^ ^} ? {-|} in a France system and {^} ? {-|} in a Québec system, while keeping the same French dictionary. An entry like {?} et could stay unchanged; it would adapt its spacing behaviour to the current system.

Furthermore, you could define the full stop to have two spaces after it in some contexts. Or for it not to force a capital letter after it in some contexts. (This writing style is convenient for internal documents, because they can then be case-sensitively searched through, because a word is never affected by a sentence-initial capital letter.)

Lastly, if you like to add a punctuation mark, you could define it once in the system definition, and then easily refer to it in dictionaries. This is convenient for hard-to-type punctuation marks, like the en dash or the em dash; they could have {--} as shortcut.

alternatives

The alternative would be to put the full definition of e.g. a France-style {?} every time in each dictionary entry: {^ ^} ? {-|}. This is cumbersome, and makes the dictionary less maintainable.

implementation idea

A requirement would be that the keys start with { and end with }. I think that an already-used definition like {#control(s)} should be allowed to be remapped as ‹punctuation›; it is up to the user to choose their preferences. This means that the user’s punctuation definitions have higher priority over other bracket things (macros, key combos, etc.).

PUNCTUATION = {
    '{.}': '{^} . {-|}',
    '{?}': '{^ ^} ? {-|}',
    '{--}': '{^ ^} –',
}

[user202729]

It somewhat is (although I'm not sure if having multiple entry points with the same name will make the external one override the internal one, or no guarantee), just write your own meta plugin.

plover/plover/formatting.py

Lines 94 to 96 in 53c416f

	# Punctuation.
	(r'([,:;])', 'comma', 0),
	(r'([.!?])', 'stop' , 0),

↓

plover/setup.cfg

Lines 92 to 105 in 53c416f

	plover.meta =
	attach = plover.meta.attach:meta_attach
	case = plover.meta.case:meta_case
	carry_capitalize = plover.meta.attach:meta_carry_capitalize
	comma = plover.meta.punctuation:meta_comma
	command = plover.meta.command:meta_command
	glue = plover.meta.glue:meta_glue
	if_next_matches = plover.meta.conditional:meta_if_next_matches
	key_combo = plover.meta.key_combo:meta_key_combo
	mode = plover.meta.mode:meta_mode
	retro_case = plover.meta.case:meta_retro_case
	retro_currency = plover.meta.currency:meta_retro_currency
	stop = plover.meta.punctuation:meta_stop
	word_end = plover.meta.word_end:meta_word_end

↓

plover/plover/meta/punctuation.py

Lines 4 to 15 in 53c416f

	def meta_comma(ctx, text):
	action = ctx.new_action()
	action.text = text
	action.prev_attach = True
	return action
	def meta_stop(ctx, text):
	action = ctx.new_action()
	action.prev_attach = True
	action.text = text
	action.next_case = Case.CAP_FIRST_WORD
	return action

Documentation: https://plover.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugin-dev/metas.html

At the moment at worst you can probably write your own plugin and write {:france_french_stop:.} as your dictionary entry. Feel clunky though.