A question arose recently on the newsgroup of how to automatically capitalise the first letter of a word in a text box, e.g. by activating the shift key on the soft keyboard. Since there is no API for the SIP to do this the workaround is to simulate a mouse click over the position of the Shift key in the soft keyboard.
An alternative method is to handle the TextChanged event on the TextBox and add some logic to capitalise words as the text is entered. The advantage here is that it is not dependent on a specific SIP being in use:-
private
void textBox1_TextChanged(object sender, System.EventArgs e){
//start with true as the first character should always be upper case
bool makeUpper = true;
//get the current text as a char array
char[] oldText = textBox1.Text.ToCharArray();
//create a new char array the same size for the new text
char[] newText = new char[oldText.Length];
//for each char
for(int iChar = 0; iChar < oldText.Length; iChar++)
{
if(makeUpper)
{
//make the character upper-case and reset the flag
newText[iChar] = Char.ToUpper(oldText[iChar]);
makeUpper =
false;}
else
{
//copy the character as-is
newText[iChar] = oldText[iChar];
}
//if it’s a space the next character should be upper-case
if(oldText[iChar] == ‘ ‘)
{
makeUpper =
true;}
}
//assign the new value
textBox1.Text =
new String(newText);//position the cursor at the end of the text
textBox1.SelectionStart = textBox1.Text.Length;
}
In The Hand Ltd 
2 replies on “Automatic Capitalisation Of Words In A Text Box”
Peter et al,
the current code is clear and well structured.
Two possible improvements which might make the code a bit more performant (not verified), but perhaps a bit less clear:
– Two arrays for text
Currently there are two copies of the Textbox contents: oldText and newText. Think one copy should do, too.
– Uppercased space char
Currently, ToUpper is called for space chars, too. By first checking for space char and then checking the ‘makeUpper’ flag, this could be avoided.
The code below should do the same job. Hope the formatting turns out properly.
Regards,
Helmut
private static string ToUpperWords(string oldText) {
bool makeUpper = true;
char[] newText = oldText.ToCharArray();
for(int iChar = 0; iChar < oldText.Length; iChar++) {
//if it’s a space there’s no need for uppercasing, but next character should be upper-case
if(oldText[iChar] == ‘ ‘) {
makeUpper = true;
} else {
if(makeUpper) {
//make the character upper-case
newText[iChar] = Char.ToUpper(oldText[iChar]);
}
// Reset the flag (current char is no space)
makeUpper = false;
}
}
//return the new value
return new String(newText);
}
Same code as in my previous post, but with most of Peter’s original comments.
Regards,
Helmut
private static string CapitalizeWords(string oldText) {
//start with true as the first character should always be upper case
bool makeUpper = true;
//get the current text as a char array
char[] newText = oldText.ToCharArray();
//for each char
for(int iChar = 0; iChar < oldText.Length; iChar++) {
//if it’s a space there’s no need for uppercasing, but next character should be upper-case
if(oldText[iChar] == ‘ ‘) {
makeUpper = true;
} else {
if(makeUpper) {
//make the character upper-case
newText[iChar] = Char.ToUpper(oldText[iChar]);
}
// Reset the flag (current char is no space)
makeUpper = false;
}
}
//return the new value
return new String(newText);
}