capitalize-word unwilling to capitalize 'god'

capitalize-word unwilling to capitalize 'god'

[Dan Jacobson]

What's the deal? In Text mode ($ emacs file.txt), put the cursor upon
the first apostrophe of
'god'
and hit ESC C, and like, no bananas, man.
However, ESC L, ESC U do their thing normally.
If I want 'God', then I must put the cursor on the g, else no
potatoes, whereas the other two work fine from even before the first
apostrophe. Indeed, ESC C acts like ESC L if not done from the g.
emacs-version "21.4.1"

Re: capitalize-word unwilling to capitalize 'god'

[Kevin Rodgers]

Dan Jacobson wrote:
 > What's the deal? In Text mode ($ emacs file.txt), put the cursor upon
 > the first apostrophe of
 > 'god'
 > and hit ESC C, and like, no bananas, man.
 > However, ESC L, ESC U do their thing normally.
 > If I want 'God', then I must put the cursor on the g, else no
 > potatoes, whereas the other two work fine from even before the first
 > apostrophe. Indeed, ESC C acts like ESC L if not done from the g.
 > emacs-version "21.4.1"

This is because in Text mode apostrophe has word syntax, counter to
one's intuition that it is a punctuation character.  Only
capitalize-word is affected because it changes the first character of
the following word, whereas upcase-word and downcase-word change all the
characters.

Here's a fix for your .emacs:

(modify-syntax-entry ?' "." text-mode-syntax-table)

-- 
Kevin Rodgers

Re: capitalize-word unwilling to capitalize 'god'

[Richard M. Stallman]

The reason for that behavior is that, in the Church of Emacs, we
worship an editor--not gods.

However, out of respect for the religious freedom of others who
disagree with us, we fixed the problem in the current development
Emacs.