Review of various retro plugins

[user202729]

plover_retro_everything

Surround words you previously typed with arbitrary translations, allowing you to turn most mode-switching plugin into a retro-plugin!

Note: repeating the same stroke (must be the same stroke) that maps to a macro that this command uses will do it with more translations. However it means it's not possible to apply to several previous words without repeating the stroke

For example if "KARPS": "=retro_everything:{MODE:CAPS},{MODE:RESET}", is in the dictionary, then stroking KARPS twice will capitalize the last 2 words.

Note: It's a macro, not a meta (acts on the translation layer, not the formatting layer)

Which means it might re-send key combo, or other non-undoable things like {PLOVER:CONFIGURE}.

Example:

"PHROFG": "{PLOVER:CONFIGURE}",
"KARPS": "=retro_everything:{^}({^},{^})",

After PHROFG/TPEFBG (open and close the configure dialog), KARPS/KARPS will open it again.

Example 2:

After WORD/-Z (which outputs words), KARPS will result in word(s) instead of words.

For KAUPB/TEGT/KARPS the output is (context) (instead of con(text) because "KAUPB/TEGT": "context" forms a single translation (being in the dictionary)

plover_retro_text_transform

Perform various text transforms, such as titlecase, retroactively.

Mostly a subset of plover_retro_everything, except that this one a meta instead of a macro, and can use a single stroke to change previous N words.

For the simplest case (convert last word into capital), the built-in meta are sufficient.

plover_retro_case

Retroactively change the case of an already written word

(can also change the previous space-character)

Strictly a subset of plover_retro_text_transform.

This plugin conflicts with the built-in retro-case meta, see Built-in commands can be overwritten by plugins · Issue #1138 · openstenoproject/plover.

Operates on the last 2 words only.

plover_retro_surround

Surround last N words with any 2 specified strings (such as '', "", ())

The "N words" doesn't include the space, which means that it can't transform word1 word2 into word1(word2), only word1 (word2). (the plover_retro_everything plugin can, but it has other limitations)

plover_retro_quotes

Surround last N words with quotes. Strictly a subset of plover_retro_surround.

plover_retro_stringop

This plugin can perform the functionality of all of the previously mentioned meta plugins, although the code to do that might not be very simple.

In particular, all regex operations can be used. For example "wrap last word in stroke and remove previous space" can be written as

{:retro_stringop:2:__import__('re').sub(r"\s*(\w+|.)$", r"(\1)", text)}