script to assist ASCII text

[Gary Kline]

On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 09:33:30PM -0400, Karl Vogel wrote:
> >> On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:00:10 -0700, 
> >> Gary Kline <kline at thought.org> said:
> 
> G> This had eluded me for years and it may not be possible, but here goes.
> G> I write using vi or, less frequently vim.  Is there any sh script that
> G> would make sure that there were exactly one space ('\040') between words,
> G> and three spaces between sentences?  My definition of "a sentence" is a
> G> string of words that ends in a period or question-mark, exclamation-mark,
> G> or ellipse ("... . || ... ? || ... !)  Also, any dash "--" could not have
> G> any whitespace around it.
> 
>    I like a similar setup -- one space between words, sentences ending
>    with a period followed by two spaces.  The GNU version of "fmt" handles
>    this pretty well.  Here's the first part of your message, formatted to
>    50-character-wide lines, with the type of spacing that drives me nuts:
> 
	[[ ... ]]


>    which makes strings like "U.S.A." look like the end of a sentence
>    even when they're not.  This should give you some ideas.
> 


	Thanks much.  I sure could have used this yersterday!!
	Esp'ly for getting rid of people who send me GUI mail that's
	readable-but-messy using Mutt. (******)

	-gary



-- 
 Gary Kline  kline at thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
        http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org