#90 Add period after skills in comma mode

[Arcterex]

When you have a list of skills and they are output in
bullet mode, all the <skill> entries can be formatted
the same (ie: start with capital, end with period), but
when they are output in "comma" mode, no changes to the
skills that are listed is made, forcing you to modify
the first <skill> to set it to having a capital, and
the last <skill> to put a period at the end of it.

If this could be done automatically it would make the
ability to use one XML file for multiple formats much
easier.

[Bruce Christensen]

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We can easily add a period to the end of skill lists in
comma mode. I'll implement that.

I think capitalization manipulation would be a useful
feature. However, it's a bit tricky to implement.

First off, there's no good way to change capitalization from
XSL. It's easy enough to change a-z -> A-Z, but much harder
when there are accented characters or non-european characters.

Beside the problem of *how* to change case, there's the
problem of *what* words should have their case changed. We
have two cases to deal with: bullet and comma formats.

In bullet format, the first letter of a skill should always
be capitalized, with one exception:
1. It's a word that's never capitalized (some words are
always written lowercase, like "e.e. cummings").

In comma format, the first letter of a skill should always
be lowercase, with two exceptions:
1. It's a word that's always capitalized ("Microsoft", "XSL")
2. It's the first skill, in which case it should be
capitalized like a bulleted skill

So, the question is, can we do this, and if so, how?

There's no way that a computer program can know if a word
should always be capitalized or lowercased (short of having
an exhaustive database of such words). Instead, we need the
user (resume creator) to indicate this somehow. We could add
a special attribute, like <skill firstCase="alwayUpper"> or
<skill firstCase="alwaysLower">, but that seems a bit messy
and heavy-handed.

Another option would be to have the user always write skills
in lowercase, unless they're an "always uppercase" word.
This would result in a skill list like this:
- sewing
- canning
- Singer sewing machine repair

or:
- novel writing
- e.e. cummings poetry analysis
- copyediting

We could then always capitalize the first letter when
formatting as bullets, or leave as-is (except for the first
skill) when formatting as commas.

This has two disadvantages:
1. Always-lowercase words would be erroneously captialized
(E.e. cummings)
2. It forces people to write in a certain way (always
initial lowercase)

Any thoughts on how we can best implement this (or whether
we even should)?

[Bruce Christensen]

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Er... that <skill firstCase="alwaysLower"> business could be
more simply written as <skill preserveInitialCase="yes">,
with a default of no.

[Bruce Christensen]

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I've made it so a period is added to the end of skills
lists. I haven't done anything with capitalization. I'd like
to see more discussion on it.

[Bruce Christensen]

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I'm un-assigning this item to myself because I'm going on a
mission for my church (http://www.lds.org), so I'll be
unavailable for the next two years. Hopefully it'll be fixed
by then!