Re: XSLT function for title capitalization?

I agree that sentence-style capitalization is (to a contemporary eye)
more elegant, but in my particular use case I need to convert for
stylistic consistency from all-caps headings to ones using the title
casing style in use in specific scholarly editions dating from several
decades ago. Nothing is going to free me from a fair bit of hand-editing
but a first-approximation transformation will reduce the amount of
effort. I had an imperfect tokenization approach but I think David C's
suggestion using xsl:analyze-string, with some tweaking, will do.

The Chicago Manual decrees that in headline style one capitalizes all
nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and most conjunctions, but
lowercases articles and prepositions except the latter when used
adverbially or adjectivally. "Is" and "He" are noun and pronoun, "at"
and "as" prepositions--so the headline style is arbitrary but not
illogical.

David

On Mon, 9 Apr 2018, Michael Kay mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> My copy-editors at Wiley tried to impose US-style title capitalization on my
book, I found it incredibly ugly:
>
> !Lula" Is Inmate at Prison He Opened as Brazil"s President
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/world/americas/brazil-lula-jail.html>
>
> "Is", "at", "He", "as"? Where's the logic?
>
> Michael Kay
> Saxonica
>
>> On 9 Apr 2018, at 21:52, David Sewell dsewell@xxxxxxxxxxxx
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> Wondering if anyone has a serviceable function (preferably in XSLT 2/3 but
v1 is fine if it works) that takes a string as input and returns it with title
capitalization according to English-language editorial practice (for example,
Chicago Manual of Style).  So for example
>>
>> A MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING ==> A Memorandum of Understanding
>>
>> WHERE DID THE DRUIDS COME FROM? ==> Where Did the Druids Come From?
>>
>> BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF [MR.] KITE ==> Being for the Benefit of [Mr.]
Kite
>>
>> Use case is, as you might guess, processing a lot of titles transcribed as
all caps, wanting to convert them to standard title case format.
>>
>> It doesn't have to be perfect, just anything that will minimize the need
for hand-editing.
>>
>> David S.
>>
>> --
>> David Sewell
>> Manager of Digital Initiatives
>> The University of Virginia Press
>> Email: dsewell@xxxxxxxxxxxx   Tel: +1 434 924 9973
>> Web: http://www.upress.virginia.edu/rotunda

--
David Sewell, Manager of Digital Initiatives
ROTUNDA, The University of Virginia Press
PO Box 400314, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4314 USA
Email: dsewell@xxxxxxxxxxxx   Tel: +1 434 924 9973
Web: http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/