I'm submitting some additional -dwim functions to that change the capitalization of text the way the user probably wants.
These work similarly to comment-dwim, or count-words: they act on the region if and only if it's active (more specifically, if (use-region-p) is true), and otherwise act on the word starting at point. Either way, they use existing functions in Emacs: e.g. #'upcase-dwim delegates either to #'upcase-region or #'upcase-word.
There are three functions: one for each of capitalizing text, upcasing text, and lowercasing text. The docstrings are based on the docstring for comment-dwim.
In my init file, I've changed the default mappings of M-u, M-l, and M-c to these new functions, and would support changing Emacs's defaults to them. However, I am led to believe that changing defaults isn't preferred, so this patch doesn't contain any of that. Even without changing defaults, I believe these functions are worth adding to Emacs.
The capitalization-related functions I'm using are all defined in C, so I can't put these new functions alongside them. I put the changes in simple.el, as that file's described as "A grab-bag of basic Emacs commands not specifically related to some major mode or to file-handling.". I'm happy to move the functions and create a new diff if there's a more appropriate file for them to live in.
Changelog entry:
* simple.el: Add functions for capitalizing text intelligently.
(capitalize-dwim): New function.
(upcase-dwim): New function.
(downcase-dwim): New function.
The diff is attached.
-Zachary Kanfer
0001-Add-functions-for-capitalizing-text-intelligently.patch