[Catalyst] Announce: Template::Plugin::Lingua::EN::Inflect

[Andrew Ford]

I have written a simple plugin interface to Damien Conway's 
Lingua::EN::Inflect module (basing the code on the autoformat plugin).

This allows you to do things like
 

    [%- USE infl = Lingua.EN.Inflect;
        message = "There PL_V(was) NO(error).\nPL_ADJ(This) PL_N(error)
    PL_V(was) fatal.";

        message | inflect(number => 1);
        message | inflect(number => 42);
        "... and "; infl.ORD(9); "ly...";
     -%]

and get nicely inflected messages like:

    There was 1 error.
    This error was fatal.
    There were 42 errors.
    These errors were fatal.
    ... and 9thly...


I will be uploading the module to CPAN later today but it is also 
available from

    http://andrew-ford.com/perl/tt2-inflect-plugin.html

The man page is included below.

Comments welcome.

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Ford,  Director    Pauntley Prints / Ford & Mason Ltd            
A.Ford at ford-mason.co.uk   South Wing Compton House                      
pauntley-prints.co.uk     Compton Green, Redmarley  Tel: +44 1531 829900
ford-mason.co.uk          Gloucester GL19 3JB       Fax: +44 1531 829901
refcards.com cronolog.org Great Britain          Mobile: +44 7785 258278




NAME
    Template::Plugin::Lingua::EN::Inflect - Interface to Lingua::EN::Inflect
    module

SYNOPSIS
      [% USE infl = Lingua.EN.Inflect; -%]
      [% FILTER inflect(number => 42); -%]
        There PL_V(was) NO(error).
        PL_ADJ(This) PL_N(error) PL_V(was) fatal.
      [% END; -%]

      [% "... and "; infl.ORD(9); "ly..." %]

      # Output:
      #   There were 42 errors.
      #   These errors were fatal.
      #   ... and 9thly...

DESCRIPTION
    The Lingua::EN::Inflect is an interface to Damian Conway's
    Linua::EN::Inflect Perl module, which provides plural inflections,
    "a"/"an" selection for English words, and manipulation of numbers as
    words.

    The plugin provides an 'inflect' filter, which can be used to
    interpolate inflections in a string. The NUM() function set a persistent
    default value to be used whenever an optional number argument is
    omitted. The number to be used for a particular invocation of 'inflect'
    can also be specified with a 'number' option.

    For the full gory details of the inflection functionality refer to the
    Lingua::EN::Inflect manual.

OBJECT METHODS
    "infl.A($string, $opt_number)"
        prepends the appropriate indefinite article to a word, depending on
        its pronunciation. If the second argument is provided and its value
        is numeric and not 1 then the value of the second argument is used
        instead.

        e.g. "infl.A("idea")" returns "an idea"

    "AN($string, $opt_number)"
        synonym for "A()"

    "NO($string, $opt_arg)"
    "NUM($string, $opt_arg)"
    "NUMWORDS($string, $opt_arg)"
    "ORD($number)"
    "PART_PRES($string, $opt_arg)"
        returns the present participle for a third person singluar verb

            PART_PRES("runs");          # returns "running"

    "PL($string, $opt_arg)"
        returns the plural of a *singular* English noun, pronoun, verb or
        adjective.

    "PL_N($string, $opt_arg)"
        returns the plural of a *singular* English noun or pronoun.

    "PL_V($string, $opt_arg)"
        returns the plural conjugation of the *singular* form of a
        conjugated verb.

    "PL_ADJ($string, $opt_arg)"
        returns the plural form of a *singular* form of certain types of
        adjectives.

    "PL_eq($string, $opt_arg)"
    "PL_N_eq($string, $opt_arg)"
    "PL_V_eq($string, $opt_arg)"
    "PL_ADJ_eq($string, $opt_arg)"
    "classical($string, $opt_arg)"
    "def_noun($string, $opt_arg)"
    "def_verb($string, $opt_arg)"
    "def_adj($string, $opt_arg)"
    "def_a($string, $opt_arg)"
    "def_an($string, $opt_arg)"
TODO
    Finish off documenting the object methods.

    Provide tests for all methods in the test suite.

    It would also be nice to have methods that spelled out numbers that were
    less than a certain threshold and that formatted large numbers with
    commas, for example:

         inflect("There PL_V(was) NO(error).", number => 0);
         # outputs: "There were no errors."

         inflect("There PL_V(was) NO(error).", number => 1);
         # outputs: "There was one errors."

         inflect("There PL_V(was) NO(error).", number => 3);
         # outputs: "There were three errors."

         inflect("There PL_V(was) NO(error).", number => 1042);
         # outputs: "There were 1,042 errors."

    This would require changes to the Lingua::EN::Inflect module.

AUTHOR
    Andrew Ford <A.Ford at ford-mason.co.uk> wrote the plugin code (basing it
    heavily on the Template::Plugin::Autoformat code).

    Damian Conway <damian at conway.org> wrote the Lingua::EN::Inflect module,
    which does all the clever stuff.

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (C) 2005 Andrew Ford. All Rights Reserved.

    This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO
    Lingua::EN::Inflect, Template, "Template::Plugin"