Capital letter following an em dash

[JPh1]

In order to write dialogs that start with an em dash (long dash), I create an em dash from 2 en dashes:
::--::—

Following that I'd like the first letter to be capitalized, as in

— I didn't know...

Is there a simple way to do that?

[gregster]

Well, the simplest approach I would imagine like this:

Code: Select all

::--::
SendInput —%A_Space%
Input, char, L1
SendInput +%char%
return

It adds already a space after — (in order too keep the approach simple). But there is most probably a number of alternative approaches.

[JPh1]

It works beautifully. Thanks a bunch.

[JPh1]

As it turns out, there are times when my keyboard freezes as a result of this code. It stays frozen for several minutes during which I can't type anything... Can you see the reason why and suggest a change or another code?

[gregster]

Well, i haven't really tested it much. Let me see if I can reproduce the problem... can you add some details about the circumstances of the freeze?. Does it happen after typing -- or rather randomly? Do you use other scripts that might interfere?
The more details you can give about the circumstances about the freeze and de-freeze, the better... also which AHK and Windows version are you using?

[JPh1]

I'm using AHK 1.1.22.4 on Windows 8.

I'm not able to reproduce the problem. It happens after I type -- (the string that your code converts to m dash followed by capitalization), but most of the time there is no problem with it.

I thought about possible interference with a code (obtained from this site) to capitalize sentences followed by punctuation marks and a new paragraph (see below).

When I hit return and type --, it becomes _-. I therefore added a code similar to yours but with _- instead of --.

Finally I only use those codes for a number of programs that are in Mygroup.

My script is therefore:

#IfWinActive ahk_group Mygroup
; Capitalization following punctuation and carriage return
~.::
~!::
~?::
KeyWait, Shift
input, w, L1 t5 v, {Escape}
if(w != A_Space && w !="`n")
return
SendEvent, {Shift Down}
input, w, L1 t5 V, {Escape}{BackSpace} ; Limit to 1 character, timeout after 5 seconds
SendEvent, {Shift Up}
return

; Capitalization following -- and _-
::--::
SendInput —%A_Space%
Input, char, L1
SendInput +%char%
return

::_-::
SendInput —%A_Space%
Input, char, L1
SendInput +%char%
return
#IfWinActive

Most of time it all works fine. But every now and then the keyboard freezes. Thanks for taking the time to look at this.

[gregster]

Perhaps the Input command is stuck somehow (although yet I am not sure why). I would first try to add a timeout there in the last two hostrings, too, something like L1 T3 - in this case timeout would be 3 seconds...

[JPh1]

I just did that. One problem I see is that the word following -- is capitalized but in case it's a hotstring (I have hundreds of them) it's not replaced with its new string. No big deal for now. Let's see if this solves the freezing problem.