title case may be no right when the en-dash exist in title

[zousiyu1995]

When the en-dash exist in the title, see bolded part,

Kinetic Studies on Enzyme-Catalyzed Reactions: Oxidation of Glucose, Decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide and Their Combination

I run the "title case" and noticed that the initial letter of the word after the en-dash is lowercased (jabref generated Enzyme-catalyzed), is this correct?
I want it to be capitalized (what i want is Enzyme-Catalyzed). Is this possible?

full bib text is shown as following,

@Article{Tao2009-ping-pong,
  author       = {Tao, Zhimin and Raffel, Ryan A. and Souid, Abdul-Kader and Goodisman, Jerry},
  title        = {Kinetic Studies on Enzyme-Catalyzed Reactions: Oxidation of Glucose, Decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide and Their Combination},
  number       = {7},
  pages        = {2977--2988},
  volume       = {96},
  date         = {2009},
  doi          = {10.1016/j.bpj.2008.11.071},
  journaltitle = {Biophysical Journal},
  type         = {Journal article},
  url          = {https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2711289/},
}

[Siedlerchr]

Thanks for the feedback, currently JabRef does only check words separated by whitespace if I understand the code correctly. No dashes or other characters are considered. I think it should be easy to adapt it to consider words directly following a dash as well. One needs to check if the current char is a dash as well.

The TitleParser splits words by whitepace:

jabref/src/main/java/org/jabref/logic/formatter/casechanger/TitleParser.java

Lines 23 to 39 in bb011c9

	for (char c : title.toCharArray()) {
	if (Character.isWhitespace(c)) {
	createWord(isProtected).ifPresent(words::add);
	} else {
	if (wordStart == -1) {
	wordStart = index;
	}
	buffer.append(c);
	}
	index++;
	}
	createWord(isProtected).ifPresent(words::add);
	return words;
	}

[jvsdurso]

Hi. Can you describe to me, step by step, how do I reach this part of the JabRef you talking about? I wanna help coding this issue.

Thanks ;)

[zousiyu1995]

Hi. Can you describe to me, step by step, how do I reach this part of the JabRef you talking about? I wanna help coding this issue.

Thanks ;)

[ThiloteE]

Changing this to ALWAYS capitalize might be wrong as well, if following certain grammars or citationstyles:

Capitalize each word that is a word on its own, as in "Protein–Protein Interaction". If the hyphen adds a prefix that doesn't stand on its own, like "Non-protein Elements", then capitalize the prefix. But I've seen it both ways.

Refs. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26964/capitalization-of-words-with-dashes-in-titles

But to be honest ... does it really matter? Just make "capitalize" to make it all capital, including after a dash. That's it. These Grammars are too complicated. Grammars should make live easier, not more complicated...

[Siedlerchr]

Agree with Thilo. We capitalize the word after the dash always.

@zousiyu1995 Codewise take a look at the TitleCaseFormatter and the corresponding test. Add an example with a dash to the test case so you can directly check if your code works

https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/blob/bb011c9313367a28990ae213b3920fe6cd10d1dc/src/main/java/org/jabref/logic/formatter/casechanger/TitleCaseFormatter.java

[ryan-carpenter]

Add an example with a dash to the test case so you can directly check if your code works

Also hyphen (U+2010) en-dash (U+2013), em-dash (U+2014) and possibly other dash-like characters. I have also encountered the minus sign (U+2212) used as a hyphen.

Some of these characters may be surrounded by zero width spaces. These will probably be recognized as white spaces—I am not sure about Java—but can still cause unexpected results if, for example, you write a regular expression that relies on a specific number of characters. Likewise, the input string may contain one or more unexpected (visible) spaces, as in "Non -protein elements".

[ryan-carpenter]

But to be honest ... does it really matter? Just make "capitalize" to make it all capital, including after a dash.

Those of use who think so choose sentence case whenever possible! Eager capitalization is a good choice for title case.

[jvsdurso]

One more question, what should I do about the words with two or more hyphens? Like "brother-in-law", "face-to-face", etc. And how should I handle wrong words like "computer--based", or it never happens?

[mlep]

Could the "simple rule" be:
"Capitalize as if hyphens and dashes where space characters, except for the em-dash (---) which is the equivalent of a period (.)"
?

[jvsdurso]

Could the "simple rule" be: "Capitalize as if hyphens and dashes where space characters, except for the em-dash (---) which is the equivalent of a period (.)" ?

What do you mean by equivalent of a period? Found this guide https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

[mlep]

Your guide is right about the detailed rules, but I believe it will be difficult (and not that useful) to develop an algorithm that matches the cases.
By period (.), I meant "put a capital letter after en em-dash".