Emacs Lisp: Reformat to Sentence Lines
This command breaks a long line or text block into multile lines, each line is a sentence, ending in a period.
This is useful for editing a thesis or long prose. Because it lets you clearly see the sentence structure.
(defun xah-reformat-to-sentence-lines () "Break a long line or text block into multiple lines by ending period. Work on text selection if there is one, else the current text block. URL `http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/elisp_reformat_to_sentence_lines.html' Version 2020-12-02 2021-04-14 2021-08-01" (interactive) (let ($p1 $p2) (if (use-region-p) (setq $p1 (region-beginning) $p2 (region-end)) (progn (if (re-search-backward "\n[ \t]*\n+" nil "move") (progn (re-search-forward "\n[ \t]*\n+") (setq $p1 (point))) (setq $p1 (point))) (re-search-forward "\n[ \t]*\n" nil "move") (setq $p2 (point)))) (save-restriction (narrow-to-region $p1 $p2) (progn (goto-char (point-min)) (while (search-forward "\n" nil t) (replace-match " " ))) (progn (goto-char (point-min)) (while (re-search-forward " +" nil t) (replace-match " " ))) (progn (goto-char (point-min)) (while (re-search-forward "\\. +\\([0-9A-Za-z]+\\)" nil t) (replace-match ".\n\\1" ))) (progn (goto-char (point-min)) (while (search-forward " <a " nil t) (replace-match "\n<a " ))) (progn (goto-char (point-min)) (while (search-forward "</a>" nil t) (replace-match "</a>\n" ))) (goto-char (point-max)) (while (eq (char-before ) 32) (delete-char -1)) (insert "\n\n"))))
The following are often useful together:
