bug#21501: new Emacs functions for capitalizing text intelligently

[Zachary Kanfer <zkanfer@gmail.com>]

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I'm submitting some additional -dwim functions to that change the
capitalization of text the way the user probably wants.

These work similarly to comment-dwim, or count-words: they act on the
region if and only if it's active (more specifically, if (use-region-p) is
true), and otherwise act on the word starting at point. Either way, they
use existing functions in Emacs: e.g. #'upcase-dwim delegates either to
#'upcase-region or #'upcase-word.

There are three functions: one for each of capitalizing text, upcasing
text, and lowercasing text. The docstrings are based on the docstring for
comment-dwim.

In my init file, I've changed the default mappings of M-u, M-l, and M-c to
these new functions, and would support changing Emacs's defaults to them.
However, I am led to believe that changing defaults isn't preferred, so
this patch doesn't contain any of that. Even without changing defaults, I
believe these functions are worth adding to Emacs.

The capitalization-related functions I'm using are all defined in C, so I
can't put these new functions alongside them. I put the changes in
simple.el, as that file's described as "A grab-bag of basic Emacs commands
not specifically related to some major mode or to file-handling.". I'm
happy to move the functions and create a new diff if there's a more
appropriate file for them to live in.

Changelog entry:

* simple.el: Add functions for capitalizing text intelligently.
(capitalize-dwim): New function.
(upcase-dwim): New function.
(downcase-dwim): New function.

The diff is attached.

-Zachary Kanfer

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From ea4856434c1e5edf3e1d50958c908ec3e5b152b5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Zachary Kanfer <zkanfer@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:04:32 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] Add functions for capitalizing text intelligently.

This patch adds three functions: upcase-dwim, downcase-dwim, and
capitalize-dwim. These functions change the capitalization of text the
way the user probably wants -- they act on the region if it's active,
and on the next word if the region isn't.
---
 lisp/simple.el | 29 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 29 insertions(+)

diff --git a/lisp/simple.el b/lisp/simple.el
index f80faae..e2d4470 100644
--- a/lisp/simple.el
+++ b/lisp/simple.el
@@ -8424,6 +8424,35 @@ contains the list of implementations currently supported for this command."
                            command-name)))))))
 
 \f
+;;; Functions relating to capitalization that Do What I Mean
+(defun upcase-dwim ()
+  "Call the upcase command you want (Do What I Mean).
+If the region is active, call `upcase-region'.  Otherwise call
+`upcase-word'."
+  (interactive "*")
+  (if (use-region-p)
+      (upcase-region (region-beginning) (region-end))
+    (upcase-word 1)))
+
+(defun downcase-dwim ()
+  "Call the downcase command you want (Do What I Mean).
+If the region is active, call `downcase-region'.  Otherwise call
+`downcase-word'."
+  (interactive "*")
+  (if (use-region-p)
+      (downcase-region (region-beginning) (region-end))
+    (downcase-word 1)))
+
+(defun capitalize-dwim ()
+  "Call the capitalize command you want (Do What I Mean).
+If the region is active, call `capitalize-region'.  Otherwise call
+`capitalize-word'."
+  (interactive "*")
+  (if (use-region-p)
+      (capitalize-region (region-beginning) (region-end))
+    (capitalize-word 1)))
+
+\f
 
 (provide 'simple)
 
-- 
2.5.2