ſ-mode.el

Manual and automatic long 's' inſertion in Emacs buffers

Copyright (c) 2013 Aaron Miller. All rights reverſed. ſhare and Enjoy!

Laſt reviſion: ſunday, December 22, 2013, ca. 21:00.

Author: Aaron Miller me@aaron-miller.me

Commentary

The ["long s" (ſ)] WIKI is an archaic glyph in Engliſh orthography. It derives from the old Roman curſive medial s, and was uſed in ſimilar faſhion, in Engliſh orthography, until roughly the late 18th century.

ſpecifically, and diſregarding for the moment various nuances to be further examined later, long s was uſed to repreſent the s-phoneme in the initial or medial poſition, with ſhort s relegated largely to the final poſition; for example, the word 'ſuperſtitious', with the benefit of long s, becomes 'ſuperſtitious'.

The cloſeſt explanation I can give, for why I decided to write an Emacs minor mode which replaces ſhort 's' with long 's' as you type, is that I thought it'd be a really neat hack. Having written the code, I ſtill think it's a neat hack. Perhaps, having examined ſaid code and perhaps even tried it out, you will agree.

ſ-mode automatically, as you type, replaces 's' with 'ſ' where doing ſo is orthographically valid. The rules by which this determination is made are as follows:

1. Short s is uſed at the end of a word (e.g. his, complains, ſucceſs)

2. Short s is uſed before an apoſtrophe, or indeed any non-alphabetical character (e.g. clos'd, us'd, neces-ſary)

3. Short s is uſed before the letter 'f' (e.g. ſatisfaction, misfortune, transfuſe)

4. Short s is uſed after the letter 'f' (e.g. offset, beefsteak), although not if the word is hyphenated (e.g. off-ſet, beef-ſteak)

5. Compound words, with the firſt element ending in double s, and thecond element beginning with s, are normally and correctly written with a dividing hyphen (e.g. Croſs-ſtitch), but very occaſionally may be written as a ſingle word, in which caſe the middle letter 's' is written ſhort (e.g. croſsſtitch).

6. Long s is uſed initially and medially except in caſes deſcribed above (e.g. ſong, uſe, preſs, ſubſtitute).

Theſe rules are derived from "The Rules for Long S", by Andrew Weſt, which may be appreciated in full [on his blog] WEſT. All credit for deriving thoſe uſage rules accrues to Mr. Weſt; the blame for whatever damage has been done by my ſimplification of Mr. Weſt's rules is entirely mine.

ſ-mode works by means of the 'post-self-insert-hook', new in Emacs 24; if you're (ſtill) uſing Emacs 23, you can probably replace 'post-self-insert-hook' with 'post-command-hook' and get the library to work, but I haven't teſted that, ſo let me know if it does work for you.

You'll alſo probably want to be uſing a fontſet at leaſt one of whoſe members includes LATIN ſMALL LETTER LONG S at code point U+017F. Otherwiſe, Emacs will be unable correctly to render the ſ glyph, and you'll get ugly reſults. (But there are plenty of fonts out there which include ſ.)

Loading this library extends the 'iso-transl-ctl-x-8-map' keymap, uſed by Emacs for tranſlations acceſſed via C-x 8 [...] ſequences, ſuch that C-x 8 s s produces ſ. Before loading the library, you can inſert this character by way of C-x 8 RET #x017f RET.

Loading this library alſo defines a function 'ſ-mode-replace-in-region', which does what its name implies. ſ-mode need not be enabled for this function to work. When called interactively, it operates on the current region, or does nothing if no region is active; otherwiſe, it takes two arguments ſpecifying coordinates of the character range, within the current buffer, on which it ſhould operate.

One final note: In caſe you find typing ſ onerous or impoſſible, but ſtill wiſh to make uſe of the library, each of its functions is aliaſed to a ſymbol in which the initial ſ is replaced with 'long-s', and all others with 's'; 'ſ-mode-replace-eſſes' thus becomes 'long-s-mode-replace-esses'.

Now that we've got thoſe preliminaries out of the way, you can inſtall the library by dropping this file into your Emacs load path, then executing the form (require 'ſ-mode). Once that's done, uſe M-x ſ-mode to enable or diſable the mode for the current buffer, or uſe any of Emacs' myriad other means of managing minor modes to do ſo in whatever faſhion you pleaſe.

Bugs/TODO

I'm aware of no bugs in this code, which is not the ſame as ſaying none exiſt.

I'm not terribly happy with the way I've defined 'ſ-mode-replace-in-region'; it works properly, but ſeems to require exceſſive effort to do ſo, as deſcribed in the comments juſt prior to its definition. If you know Emacs well enough to tell me what I'm doing wrong there, I'll be delighted to hear from you.

Miſcellany

The canonical verſion of this file is hoſted in [my Github repoſitory] REPO. If you didn't get it from there, great! I'm happy to hear my humble efforts have achieved wide enough intereſt to reſult in a fork hoſted ſomewhere elſe. I'd be obliged if you'd drop me a line to let me know about it.

The repoſitory in which you find this file is named 'long-s-mode.el' for reaſons of Github's apparent incapacity to ſupport repoſitories whoſe names contain characters outſide the ISO-8859-1 range.